


Finders, Keepers

by arturas



Series: Everything You Ever Wanted [2]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Childhood Friends, DOMA, Drama, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Orphans, Pre-Canon, Pre-Doma, Pre-Doma the Dark Organization | Waking the Dragons Arc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 38,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26785036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arturas/pseuds/arturas
Summary: Valon’s not one to dwell on his past. His life with Doma is so far removed from his old life that it would almost be easier to pretend that there was nothing there at all. Except that there were good things amongst the bad, too, and try as he might sometimes he can’t help but wish that things could have gone just a little bit differently. There’s no point to daydreaming though. What’s gone is gone. At least, until it isn't, but he's not the only one that things have changed for.
Series: Everything You Ever Wanted [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1922959





	1. Three Months Ago

**Author's Note:**

> This story as a whole contains spoilers for the ending of The Dreams We Leave Behind, but only if the ending of that work wasn't kind of already spoiled from the series description (and/or by being blatantly obvious to begin with). This was published prior to TDWLB being finished because I enjoy writing the Doma guys a lot more than Sugoroku/child!Yugi and I don't have the patience to leave it in draft until I've finished TDWLB. It also contains references to events of other stories in the AU (currently unpublished, because I have far too many things on the go at once - I'll update these notes if/when that changes), but nothing as spoiler-y timeline-wise.
> 
> As always, concrit is much appreciated!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't really know what he's after but that's never stopped him before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for referenced violence/death and very poor language.

_You hid your skeletons when I had shown you mine_

_You woke the devil that I thought you’d left behind_

_I saw the evidence, the crimson soaking through_

_Ten thousand promises, ten thousand ways to lose_

_~ POWERLESS, © Linkin Park_

* * *

Valon’s never really cared much for Amelda. Granted, that’s mostly because the first time they met the redhead kicked him _really_ fucking hard in the balls for no good reason (calling someone a bitch isn’t a reason as far as he’s concerned), but even without that Amelda’s still a prick. He has that whole holier-than-though attitude going on, that casual aloofness that just _screams_ for a punch to the face, and he acts like he’s older than Rafael even though he’s still in his teens too.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a use, though. And he _did_ cover for the Mezuel incident without even being asked to so it’s not like he’s a total waste of air.

Valon waits a few weeks after the Mezuel mission – partly to figure out how to properly word things without coming off like he’s begging, mostly to figure out if he actually wants to ask in the first place – and then approaches Amelda as the redhead is typing away on his laptop one evening.

Amelda, as per usual, ignores him.

He folds his arms and juts his chin out. It’s wasted on Amelda, he knows this, but force of habit dies hard. ‘Got a question for you.’

‘Then ask it.’ Amelda doesn’t even bother looking away from his screen.

‘You’re good with computer sh– stuff, right?’

For a moment it doesn’t look like he’s even going to respond but then he gives a crisp nod.

‘Good enough to pull up a Japanese criminal record?’

‘If you can read enough to translate the results yourself.’ He sounds almost bored; it’s like he’s had this conversation a thousand times before. ‘I can get you a search, but I’m not fluent enough to do the rest for you.’

Valon scowls. Amelda _knows_ his reading isn’t the best – in any language – but he manages to reign his temper in just for a moment. God knows he can prank the bastard later. He wants answers to his questions now. ‘Won’t be a problem.’

Amelda finally looks away from his screen. ‘You do understand your new identity has no ties to your old records?’

He hadn’t actually thought about that. It doesn’t matter, though, and he shakes his head. ‘Not mine I’m after.’

One fine red eyebrow is raised. As always, annoyingly enough, even if he’s wondering Amelda doesn’t ask any questions. ‘Give me a few minutes.’

Valon watches silently as thin fingers skim across the keyboard. Truth be told he’s kind of glad Amelda isn’t asking the reason for his search; he’s not sure how he’d answer. He’s not even really sure why he wants to search at all. Except that once upon a time he made a pinky-promise with his best and only friend and even though it’s been more than a year _and_ she broke the promise first, something in him still wants to know… well, _something_. Whether she disappeared forever or if she came back like she promised she would. Whether she’s in jail herself now, or if that second chance she always talked about worked out for her in the end.

He catches himself kind of hoping that she blew her second chance and briefly feels guilty. But she’d promised that if she took her second chance she was going to take him with her and she didn’t. It was practically her fault he ended up in high security to begin with and honestly, if all _has_ gone well for her, he’s not going to get any answers now regardless. He’s been going to Hell for years now anyway, even before he started stealing souls for a living – a little bit of jealousy isn’t exactly going to damn him now.

Amelda continues typing.

The more he thinks about it, the stupider his request seems. She won’t be in jail. Even if the cops did catch her she’d just disappear on them again (it still pisses him off something fierce that she didn’t have the courtesy to at least _try_ to break him out when she left; impracticality be damned, he’d have tried it, so she should’ve too). Even if she _is_ in jail, what’s he gonna do about it? Send her a letter from a name she doesn’t know, return address to some island in the middle of the fucking ocean?

But something in his mind still wants to know. Something in his mind still wants an answer to a question he can’t even begin to put into words. Maybe it’ll be like that game show Gurimho likes to watch – the boring one where the answers come first and then the contestants have to figure out the question. Maybe he just needs to see the answer to work out what he wants to ask in the first place. And then maybe he needs to fucking punch himself for finding _anything_ Gurimho likes to be useful or relevant.

Amelda interrupts his thoughts of monocle-related violence by spinning the laptop around, displaying a screen full of vaguely familiar characters. ‘Type the name you’re after,’ he says, _still_ sounding bored. ‘Or draw it, if it’s after the pictures instead.’

‘They’re _kanji_ ,’ he says, hoping that the implied “idiot” came through in his tone enough to make up for not saying it aloud, but leans in to look at the screen anyway. It looks like the system doesn’t care if he gives it romaji or kanji so he traces the surname they used to share on the screen – 神の子, Kaminoko – before typing in “KAZUMI” to follow it. She only ever wrote it in romaji and he’s not about to waste his time guessing characters, but he’s also not about to pass over an opportunity to rub his literacy in Amelda’s uninterested face.

It takes the system a second or two to process the search. When it finishes, though, there’s only one result waiting for him. Half the characters he doesn’t really recognise; he can’t tell if it’s the font or if he’s just that out of practice. After a few moments he manages to translate the important bits: her accessory charges for his triple murder and grievous bodily harm, then her fugitive/primary suspect status for the double homicide in Komatsu, then… huh. Eight counts of homicide dated six months ago, in somewhere called Domino – around the same time as he was duelling on that island _._ There’s a few notes about being returned to Komatsu to be charged for the first two murders (confessed and confirmed), a few minor incidents in the prison (petty theft, property destruction), then around four months ago – _escaped_ – _fugitive_ – _dangerous, at large_. Nothing else since. No sightings, no notices, no updates. Disappeared without a trace. _Again_.

The Kaz he remembers hated the idea of killing people. She could, even more easily than he could, but she’d sooner let herself get socked in the gut than even risk killing someone (and had on more than one occasion - not to mention the times she stopped _him_ from giving a downed opponent a well-deserved thrashing just on the off chance he did something permanent). Even when they told him that she’d killed her foster guardians and fled he hadn’t really believed it. She’d surely just been at the wrong place at the wrong time, probably a home invasion gone wrong, and panicked and run away rather than try to explain things (if he wasn’t around to back her up she’d run away without a second’s hesitation, and he most certainly hadn’t been there that night). There was no way the Kaz he knew would kill two people looking after her in cold blood. No _way_.

Eight people, though. And then she _let_ them catch her, _let_ them charge her, _let_ them return her to Komatsu where she actually confessed to the prior two murders – and then waited literal months in prison before escaping like she could’ve from the start…

He doesn’t realise he’s clenching his fists until he goes to jam his hands in his pockets. ‘All good. Thanks.’

Amelda’s lips thin slightly. With a few quick key-presses the connection is closed and the screen returns to a conspicuously clear desktop. ‘I didn’t realise that was a word you knew.’

‘I’m full of surprises.’ He manages to relax a hand enough to run it through his hair, like his gut isn’t churning and he doesn’t want to put his fist through the table. ‘Cheers.’ Then he turns on his heel and strides out of the room.

He hears Amelda start typing again before he’s even gotten past the threshold and can’t decide whether he feels relieved or even guiltier to know she blew that second chance so spectacularly.

Eight people. Ten counting the two in Komatsu. Almost double his body-count (ignoring souls captured, but that’s something else entirely) and that’s assuming she hasn’t added any since escaping the prison. Ten people who hadn’t burned down their church like the arsonists, who hadn’t trafficked in kids like Mezuel, who hadn’t done anything _worthy_ of being killed.

But she’d let them catch her. Let them catch her, charge her and ship her back to where he’d used to be. Where he _would_ have been if he hadn’t been picked up by Dartz. She’d tried to keep that promise eventually – tried in all the wrong ways, but she’d still tried. He couldn’t fault her for that, right? She’d tried to make things right, just like he’d tried to make things right. It wasn’t their fault they were both doomed to perpetual failure when it really mattered. Just her fault that she fucked up so badly the first time.

Valon pauses at the door to his room. He can’t tell whether he wants to just lie down and listen to music until his ears start ringing or whale on a punching-bag until he can’t feel his hands anymore. He feels almost tired somehow, even though he’s done practically nothing all day, but he also kind of wants to slam his fists into something even if it means Raf will frown at his scabby knuckles over tomorrow’s breakfast and give him the usual _my door is always open_ spiel.

It’s not that it’s not appreciated even if it is kind of condescending. He’s even taken the blond up on the offer, once or twice, but Raf is something like six years older than him and comes from a world that Valon never even knew existed. It’s not that the man doesn’t mean well – Raf’s the closest thing to a friend Valon has these days and has saved his ass more than once since he arrived at Doma – but he can’t just sit down and shoot the shit about nothing with Raf. Raf’s not going to help him prank Gurimho or snark at Master Dartz behind his back. Raf’s entirely too straight-laced and mature for that. Raf’s the kind of friend Gurimho would say Valon needs but when it comes down to it, he’s not the kind of friend Valon _wants_. Not on nights like tonight, anyway.

Fuck it. Gym it is, then.

So Valon walks on past his room, kind of bitter and more than a little annoyed for reasons he still can’t put into words. He’ll spend the evening bare-knuckle boxing with an overstuffed punching-bag and tomorrow Raf will frown and lecture and none of it will be what he _wants_ but it’ll be all that he _gets_ so he might as well just suck it up, buttercup, and see if he can beat his last power rating before his hands give out.

It’s not like he’s ever gotten anything else he wanted out of life, anyway. Why would he have thought this would be any different?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kaminoko is a fairly literal translation of "child of God" - I figure Sister Maria would give her long-term wards something a little more church-appropriate than "Doe" or "Smith". Amelda's somewhere in the 17/18 range in this story; Rafael's 20/21 and Valon's 15.


	2. The Day Of, Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A routine side-mission goes sideways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for (minor) violence.

Ridiculous. Absolutely and utterly _ridiculous_. It was bad enough they’d been sent to the city of Vladivostok in the first place (if one could even _call_ it a city given how antiquated and run-down it was); it was cold, barren and filled with hard-eyed people who answered his questions in broken English and muttered in angry-sounding Russian behind his back. The roads were more pothole than bitumen, the hotel rooms were colder than the streets outside and – the food? He didn’t even want to _think_ about the food.

He hated it. He hated _all_ of it.

He’d kept a stiff upper lip, though, reminding himself that they were only meant to be in the godforsaken place for a few days. Once they had their target they could leave. In, out, done. Except Master Dartz had then discovered another strong soul nearby and really, how often did any of their higher-level operatives go to Vladivostok, never mind Nakhodka? Surely it wouldn’t be _too_ much of a hassle for the four of them to make a brief detour to retrieve the soul of some minor-league killer for hire?

Well – the hassle part had been implied. Master Dartz didn’t make suggestions, he gave orders. Like the order they were staying in Nakhodka until they found one Aleksey Volkov and captured his soul for the Orichalcos. Like the order that _Rafael_ was to manage this side mission instead of _him_. Something about needing the practice for the future, that one day he’d be capable of managing Amelda and Valon on his own.

Like he’d said: ridiculous.

Keeping his gun at the ready, Gurimho stalked forwards through the quiet house. Yet another ridiculous thing – for an assassin, Volkov apparently wasn’t much of a believer in security. He supposed that _could_ be chalked up to being based in the ass-end of a backwater Russian dump but still, surely any assassin worth the title would have at least some interest in securing his own bolt-hole. Not that he was complaining about it, really. It made his current job much easier. It was just another ridiculous thing to irritate him.

‘ _Report in,_ ’ Rafael’s voice commanded over his earpiece.

Gurimho rolled his eyes. To think he was listening to the orders of a kid barely half his age (all right, that was a _slight_ exaggeration; he was still a good few years away from forty-two. Mentally, on the other hand…) – _ridiculous_.

‘Ground floor still empty,’ Valon answered, far too loudly – Gurimho had told him ( _repeatedly_ ) that the earpiece microphone would still pick up his voice just fine despite the scarf over his face, but Valon had never been good at listening to instructions. ‘You lot?’

‘ _No sign up here either. Check again in two._ ’

‘I see there was no point to teaching the three of you non-verbal codes,’ Gurimho muttered.

‘There’s nobody around to hear us,’ Valon replied. ‘Dunno what your problem is.’

‘Correction; we do not _know_ if there is anyone around to hear us, and until we do, we should assume that there _is_ and act accordingly. With that in mind: keep your voice _down_.’

As he turned around to continue his search, he could all but see Valon roll his eyes. Delightful. Part of him was tempted to pull the boy into line but that would mean going back on his own prior orders for quiet; instead he settled for resolving to complete the mission as quickly as possible and include a slightly embellished account of the incident in his report. The sooner they were done, the sooner they could leave and the sooner he’d never have to come back to Nakhodka again. Unless Master Dartz ordered him otherwise, of course…

The current room was no good. Once upon a time it might have been a living room but now, with only a single greying moth-eaten sofa and an upturned cardboard box for a table, it was little more than a passage to the room beyond – probably a kitchen. They’d come in through the garage (empty), past the stairs to the floor above (the cupboard below them was also empty; he’d checked after Rafael and Amelda had made it to the upper landing) and then cleared what had probably once been a sun-room (also conspicuously empty – and given the veritable pile of cigarette butts beside the bay window seat, more of a smoke-room than anything else). Yes, the room beyond was most likely a kitchen. Also most likely empty.

As he approached the chipped door he caught a glimpse of something dark to his right and he mechanically twisted to face it, raising his gun.

‘What is it?’ Valon asked.

Gurimho didn’t even need to look at him to know the boy was probably still fumbling to draw his stun-gun (there was no way any of them would allow any fifteen-year-old – let alone Valon – to wield an _actual_ gun). Fortunately – or unfortunately – the dark mass he’d spotted was nothing more than a chipped, slightly-ajar door tucked behind an outcrop of wall. He lowered his gun. ‘Just a door,’ he said, glancing between it and the doorway to the probable kitchen with a frown.

‘Where’s it go? We gonna go through it?’

Resolutely ignoring the boy he carefully approached the door and nudged it open with his foot. In the half-light from the window he could just make out a set of stairs descending into the gloom – a basement. Fantastic. Yet another floor to be cleared. Chances were good that if Volkov were nearby he’d be able to hear which way they went, too; if they weren’t fast – and quiet – he could quite easily escape past them, rendering the whole break-in pointless.

…unless, of course, they took one floor each, leaving their target with nowhere to go and giving him a well-deserved break from Valon’s presence. It wasn’t ideal, of course (pairs were acceptable; operating alone was always a risk) but right now –

‘Oi, Gurimho! You hear me?’

It was a very easy decision.

‘ _I_ will head down and investigate because _you_ are far too loud,’ he said in a harsh whisper. ‘ _You_ can clear out the rest of this floor. Or is that asking too much of you, to do something without supervision?’

Valon scowled and turned on his heel, muttering under his breath as he stalked to the far doorway. Gurimho briefly considered calling the boy out but, well, Valon _was_ actually listening to him for once – and if he was too distracted to notice someone creeping up on him and took a blow to the back of the head or worse, so much the better. So instead he raised his gun and quietly made his way down the basement stairs. Overhead, trails of dust fell from the ceiling as his “partner” thundered across the floor.

Rather pleasantly the basement light was already on. It wasn’t a particularly strong light, true, but it was enough for him to be sure that there was nobody else in the room. There was a broken table in one corner (top flush against the wall and three remaining legs sticking out like spikes), a small pile of empty food wrappers scattered around the floor and a row of empty, dusty shelves on the far side of the room.

With a scowl he lowered his weapon. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. Given Volkov’s other failings he really should have expected that the man would avoid the most appropriate and secure place to hide. Then again, the longer he was down here the less time he’d have to spend babysitting Valon, so he slowly walked the perimeter of the room anyway. Just in case.

As he turned away from the broken table (had that leg been… _burned_ off?), he realised that the basement wasn’t quite as devoid of interest as he’d thought: there was a door below the stairs. Given the lack of surprise attacks the “room” beyond was clearly empty. Valon was still thundering around upstairs, though, so he would lose nothing by investigating it… and if he was being honest with himself, given the general state of the place, he _really_ wouldn’t put it past Volkov to be simply hiding and hoping they’d leave without finding him.

His mental derision was cut short as he twisted the handle and found the door was locked.

Perhaps Volkov wasn’t quite as stupid as he’d thought.

Angling himself to keep the stairs in view (and his body out of line of sight of the doorway), Gurimho holstered his gun and began fiddling with the lock. Thankfully due to the nature of his job (and definitely not because Valon lost more keys than he was given) he always had a rudimentary lock-pick somewhere on his person; he’d be lying if he said he was an expert but he was certainly skilled enough to overcome such a basic lock as this.

‘ _Report in,_ ’ Rafael said, for what felt like the hundredth time.

Valon began yammering something about “splitting up” and “kitchens”.

With a scowl, Gurimho clicked his earpiece twice and tuned out the resultant request for clarification in favour of concentrating on the lock. _Idiots_. Once for an immediate problem, twice for caution, thrice for all-clear; how many more times would he have to tell them before they actually started using it?

A soft _click_ drew his attention back to the task at hand: the lock had finally given way. Either Volkov was deaf as well as stupid or he really wasn’t behind the door, Gurimho thought, stashing the pick as he drew his gun. With a shake of his head he levelled the weapon at where he figured a man’s chest would be. Viciously twisting the handle he threw open the door, only partially expecting a panicking Russian to come flying out –

To his absolute surprise a pair of soft green eyes blinked up at him through the gloom before their owner (a scrap of a child with wispy blonde hair and pale skin) scuttled backwards, dragging a worn comforter up to her chin to protect herself.

For what felt the thousandth time since being sent on this errand he found himself scowling. A child? A _child_? What was a child doing here? It was bad enough that Valon was on this mission, never mind an _actual_ child, and an innocent one at that. She couldn’t have been older than nine or ten – maybe even younger, going off her waifish frame and terrified expression.

She pushed herself further into the corner, staring at him fearfully. He mentally cursed again; god _damn_ , this wasn’t something he’d planned for and definitely not something Rafael would have planned for. Until they found Volkov this place wasn’t even remotely safe for a child. He didn’t trust the lock on the door to hold – he’d got through it, after all, and he was no expert at lock-picking – which left only one option.

With a growl he tucked his gun back into its holster, squatting and extending a hand to the girl. ‘You should not be here,’ he said, as slowly as he could bring himself to speak.

Those soft brown eyes quivered as she blinked up at him.

Wait – brown?

‘ _Ty tozhe_ ,’ she said, and that was all Gurimho remembered before a jolt of burning pain ripped through his skull and he fell into unconsciousness.

* * *

‘Still no response?’ Amelda muttered, glancing over his shoulder at Rafael.

Rafael shook his head. ‘Nothing. Valon, how much of the floor do you have left to clear?’

‘ _Ah… like a bathroom and maybe a laundry? Not much._ ’

‘Okay.’ Rafael exhaled, then shook his head. ‘Finish clearing and then head down and see if you can find out what Gurimho’s doing.’

‘ _Roger that._ ’

Amelda swept the study one last time. Broken desk; upturned chair; no footprints in the grime bar his and Rafael’s. ‘Here’s hoping Volkov got to him.’

Rafael shot him a disapproving look. It lacked conviction, though. ‘Let’s move on, then.’

Amelda nodded and moved up to follow the oldest Swordsman into the hallway. So far the upper floor had been as empty as the rest of the house – one empty and unused study, one empty and unused bathroom (unless the smashed mirror and dry toilet were a very clever ruse), and a room that had definitely been a bedroom at some point but didn’t look to have been used for months. With only two doors left to check, one of which looked very likely to be a linen cupboard or utility closet, Amelda was beginning to suspect that despite their earlier tailing efforts Volkov wasn’t home at the moment.

Rafael’s pace slowed as they neared the closer of the two remaining closed doors, allowing Amelda to catch up to him. Before he could open the door, however, he stopped short and grabbed Amelda’s shoulder, roughly yanking the redhead behind him with a surprised snarl.

‘What is it?’

For a few seconds Rafael was silent, staring at the door with narrowed eyes. Then, in response to a question Amelda clearly hadn’t asked: ‘Only if you can guarantee your safety. If you can’t, merely keeping watch for it will be fine.’

Ah; Eatos, by the sounds of things, or one of the other Guardians. With a shake of his head he stepped out from behind Rafael and gave his colleague a quizzical glance. ‘What was it?’

‘Another spirit. Big black dragon.’

‘Not one of yours, I take it.’

Rafael grimaced. ‘No.’

‘Volkov’s?’

‘I don’t know. Eatos is following it; we’ll soon find out.’ With a shake of his head he reached for the door handle, weapon raised once more. Amelda instinctively moved to lean against the wall beside the door to cover their backs. The handle rattled, then the lock clicked open and with a creak the door swung wide –

Then to his surprise Rafael lowered his weapon, cursing aloud. ‘Amelda.’

‘What?’

‘Problem.’

Almost unwillingly he turned to glance into the far room. His eyes widened when he saw exactly what Rafael’s “problem” was. ‘Oh, _shit_.’

‘I know.’ Rafael shifted towards the child a little and she shrank back against the wall, green eyes huge and scared (not surprising, Amelda reflected; between Rafael’s gigantic frame and his gun, it was a miracle that the girl hadn’t run off crying immediately). ‘We can’t leave her here.’

‘What’s a child doing here?’

‘I don’t know,’ he replied, but his tone suggested that he wasn’t thinking of anything pleasant. ‘Perhaps Aleksey will know when we find him.’

Amelda was suddenly very grateful he was not Mr. Volkov.

Valon’s voice broke over his earpiece. ‘ _What’s wrong?_ ’

‘There’s a child here,’ Rafael responded, the tone of his voice suggesting that he’d now be equally as happy to see their target dead as soulless. Amelda actually agreed with him on that – the girl was clad in worn men’s clothes clearly far too big for her and looked almost malnourished as a result, kneeling protectively in front of a worn and filthy backpack. Her face was clean, though, and the earrings she wore (far too many and _far_ too adult for her age) glinted brightly even in the gloom. Whatever the reason for her being here, it wasn’t good.

‘ _A kid? Like, a little one or –_ ’

‘Younger than you, it looks like.’ He nodded to Amelda, who holstered his weapon and began walking slowly across the empty room towards the blonde-haired girl.

‘ _We aren’t gonna leave them here, are we?_ ’

‘Of course not. Amelda’s getting her now. Found Gurimho yet?’

Amelda muted his earpiece and padded his way to the girl, hands up and voice soft, but that didn’t stop her from shrinking back even further. ‘Easy, easy. We’re not going to hurt you.’ Her eyes slid between him and Rafael and he grimaced. ‘He didn’t mean to scare you. We’re… we’re after somebody else. Somebody bad. We’re here to help.’

Those huge emerald eyes came back to him. Her lower lip trembled slightly. Could she even understand what he was saying? Most of the locals had at least a rudimentary grasp of pidgin English but she _was_ only young; given her location and clothing there was no guarantee she was a local in the first place, either.

‘Amelda,’ Rafael said softly, and he nodded in response. They didn’t have much time – someone would hear the noise before long and they still had to find Volkov before police or underworld backup arrived.

He knelt down in front of her, keeping one hand raised and extending the other to her, speaking as slowly and clearly as he could. ‘ _My ne obideli tebya_.’ “We will not hurt you” – or at least, something close to it.

She gingerly reached for his hand and replied in a soft, high voice, ‘ _Khotel by ya skazat' to zhe samoye._ ’

…wait, why was she wishing for something the same?

Before he could react she’d yanked his arm, hard, smashing him cheek-first into the ground and twisting his arm behind his back. Stars filled his vision as a wave of pain ripped through his skull – he could dimly hear Rafael’s shouts, hear Valon’s heavy footsteps through the floor below –

Something clicked once, loudly, directly behind his head, and that same high voice spoke in broken English, now in a much harsher tone. ‘Drop gun.’

‘Better idea to drop yours,’ Rafael growled. From his prone position Amelda couldn’t quite make out Rafael’s face, only his waist and legs; he’d clearly raised the gun again, though, for his hands were nowhere in sight. A bolt of pain lanced from the cheek that had been smacked into the floor and Amelda forced himself to suppress a hiss of pain. ‘There’s more of us than there are of you.’

‘Gun full. No scare.’ A knee dug into his free arm and he winced; she was heavier than she looked. Stronger than she looked, too – Christ above, how had he been blindsided by a _child_?

‘So you understand what I’m saying?’

‘Hear, _da_. Speak, no big.’

‘I suppose that’s something, at least. We weren’t expecting a kid.’

‘ _No_ kid,’ she snarled, and Amelda’s arm was twisted painfully.

‘You sure look like one. Was that how you got our colleague?’

‘No-hair man?’ Amelda could feel the barrel of the gun pressing against his skull, now, and he tried to recall if there was anything in their training about gun-wielding children, or what to do in the event a gun-wielding child managed to take one of them hostage. His mind helpfully supplied a reminder that their helicopter was stocked with a full field trauma kit. It didn’t really make him feel better. ‘ _Da_. Idiot should no go by one.’

‘Can’t argue with that.’

‘ _Prekrasnyy_.’ She dragged Amelda up to his knees, gun still firmly pressed against his head and arm still wrenched behind his back. He could see now that he’d been right; Rafael’s gun was still fixed on his captor, blue eyes roving over the scene before him… and then Rafael’s gaze swivelled up, fixing on some invisible thing behind the girl, who scoffed softly under her breath. ‘So she yours. Will no help. Again: drop gun. Other one, drop too, or I shoot.’

‘ _Shit_ ,’ Valon cursed from outside the room, and Rafael visibly grimaced. ‘How’d she –’

‘Drop both.’ The barrel pressed deeper and the mocking edge to her voice disappeared. ‘In here, where I see. _Now_.’

Rafael’s jaw tightened but he slowly set his weapon on the floor, moving to the side to allow Valon entry. The youngest Swordsman set his stun-gun beside Rafael’s pistol and stood back with folded arms, eyes locked on Amelda. Rafael’s expression had returned to neutral while Valon’s was still taut and worried.

‘I suppose you work for Aleksey Volkov, then?’ Rafael said. ‘You weren’t in any of the pictures but I can’t think of any other reason for taking him hostage.’

‘I think hear you say name.’ She actually sounded somewhat surprised. ‘Where get?’

Rafael nodded at the weapons on the floor. ‘You really think we’re just breaking in for fun?’

Her grip shifted and Amelda couldn’t quite suppress a hiss of pain as his shoulder was twisted further behind him. ‘No mean like that. That name… name good for face, but nobody now use. Well – I think nobody now use.’

Expressions of confusion spread across both his colleagues’ faces. ‘That was the name we were given,’ Rafael eventually answered, somewhat hesitantly. ‘What do you mean by “good for the face”?’

Her grip on Amelda’s wrist… _slithered_ , somehow, and he shuddered as a faint, whisper-like hiss emanated from behind him. What the hell was she doing? The gun hadn’t moved, her grip hadn’t loosened, just _changed_ , and Rafael’s jaw had visibly dropped and – _Rafael’s jaw dropped?_

Valon took a full step back, eyes wide above his scarf. ‘No… no fuckin’ way. It – _no_.’

Amelda looked to Rafael for an explanation but received nothing; his colleague’s platter-sized eyes were still firmly fixed on his captor. He tried to keep his voice calm and light. It still came out with a shake to it anyway. ‘What’s going on?’

When Rafael found his voice, he sounded more shocked that Amelda had ever heard him in all the time he’d known him. ‘I think our information on Volkov was lacking.’

‘No joke,’ she said, but the voice was different now – deeper, masculine and with a strong British crispness to it. ‘So, who know Aleksey name?’

‘You wouldn’t know them.’

‘I know lot. Tell me.’

‘Mismatched eyes, intellectual demeanour, blue hair?’

‘… no joke hair?’

‘Serious as can be.’

‘Huh. Guess no.’ That same awful slithering feeling passed through her grip – this time with an added growth in hand size – and he involuntarily shuddered. There was something _wrong_ about that motion; something dark and off and just plain not _right_. Even if his colleagues’ reactions hadn’t tipped him off he’d have known from that touch alone that something about the girl – boy? – _Aleksey_ was very clearly supernatural. Why hadn’t they been warned? It was almost inconceivable Master Dartz wouldn’t have known…

He dimly realised that his heart had started to pound incredibly fast. Like the rest of the situation it felt surreal, disconnected almost. He felt far too calm for someone with a gun to his head but at the same time felt more terrified than he’d been since leaving his homeland. If he died here, Miroku’s death would be unavenged –

Finally Valon spoke up. ‘Do you… what do you really look like?’

‘Of course want know.’ A third voice; masculine again, this one with a rich Russian accent. ‘Say what. You say who say Aleksey Volkov, I show face.’

Rafael scratched at his ear, taking a step towards the door frame and away from Aleksey. ‘That seems oddly charitable of you. I don’t suppose that’s because you’re planning on killing us once you’ve done so?’

‘No kill, maybe.’ The grip on his wrist tightened yet again – how had his hand not fallen off yet? – and he was dragged to the right a little, barrel never leaving his skull. ‘I no like kill no reason.’

‘I find that hard to believe given your –’

‘Dartz.’

Despite his current predicament Amelda couldn’t refrain from shouting, ‘Valon, you _idiot_!’

Valon took a shaky step forwards, lowering his scarf to reveal his face and completely ignoring the shocked glares of his companions. ‘Dartz is his name. Now show us your face.’

‘…what call him?’ Aleksey asked softly.

‘An _idiot_.’

‘I told you his name, now show us your face,’ Valon repeated firmly. His eyes hadn’t left Aleksey since they’d first shifted.

‘Valon, just what is so vital about a face that you felt it necessary to give up his _name_?’ Rafael growled. He was entirely blocking the right side of the doorway now, almost close enough to reach across and grab the mouthy teen, but he wasn’t reaching for him… yet.

‘Varon?’

Amelda was not at all pleased to hear the tone of surprise in their voice, and even less pleased to hear Aleksey using Valon’s pre-Doma name. The barrel wasn’t pressing quite so hard now, though – perhaps if he could distract Aleksey with Valon there would be a chance for escape? Rafael couldn’t use the Seal successfully outside of a duel without weakening them first but while they still had him hostage, options for that appeared… slim. ‘There you are. Two names, even. Show the face and be done with it already.’

‘It’s you, isn’t it?’ Valon asked softly.

_It’s you?_

‘Valon,’ Rafael started, in a tone that fell somewhere in the middle of “curious” and “horrified”, ‘What do you mean by, “it’s you”?’

‘Kaz,’ he said simply, and then a loud explosion sounded from the doorway behind Rafael.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record I am fairly certain that neither Vladivostok nor Nakhodkha are considered run-down or backwater, but anyone who wears a monocle unironically is almost certainly a bit full of themselves.
> 
> Translations - I've done my best but I am 100% not fluent in Russian, so my apologies if I've botched grammar and/or the transliterations from Cyrillic. I could very well claim that it's to make the character's own non-nativeness apparent but that's kind of a weak excuse. "Ty tozhe" = "you too"; "My ne obideli tebya" has a deliberately incorrect tense (closer to "we didn't hurt you" as opposed to "we will not hurt you"); "Khotel by ya skazat' to zhe samoye" = "I wish I could say the same"; "Prekrasnyy" = "lovely/beautiful", with a heavy dose of sarcasm. Hopefully "da" is obvious.


	3. old haunts are for forgotten ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He still thinks that the Bible would be way more interesting with more fighting and explosions, but he does have to admit that its stories do sometimes come in handy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for minor violence involving minors. Set long, long before the present day.

_Maybe I should hate you for this_

_Never really did ever quite get that far_

_~ You’re So Last Summer, © Taking Back Sunday_

* * *

The first time Varon sees her, he’s limping back to the church after a run-in with some of the local middle school thugs and thinking solely of the dinner that his unplanned brawl has caused him to miss. He’s not paying any mind to the pile of tatty clothes behind the dumpster in the alley that runs past the back of Kurama’s Katsu-Kun. They’re not edible, or at least don’t look it. He knows the closing shift are pretty good about bagging up the day’s waste though and so long as none of them spot him there’s a good chance of snagging something from the bin before it goes rank. Sister Maria _might_ give him something if he arrives late for dinner but she’ll probably refuse once she sees the new grazes on his knuckles or the cut on his cheek and he’d rather take his chances with Kurama’s first.

He’s so preoccupied with his missed dinner, in fact, that he’s actually caught by surprise when said bundle of clothes squawks – _squawks_ , like an actual chicken – and tries to shove him away when he squeezes behind the dumpster. ‘The hell are you doing?’

‘Whaddya _mean_ , what am I doing?’ he splutters, after jumping near out of his skin. ‘What are _you_ doing?’

‘I’m here for my dinner!’ The bundle resolves itself into a skinny, grey-eyed, black-haired girl. ‘What’re _you_ here for?’

‘ _My_ dinner.’ He folds his arms and squares off against her. She might be smaller than him but he’s learned the hard way that the streets are no place for sharing, no matter what Sister Maria’s Bible stories say he should do. He’s pretty sure he’s never seen this girl at the church, either, so it’s not like he’s risking a lecture about fishes and bread and God knows what else when he takes the leftovers for himself. ‘So get lost.’

‘I was here first.’ She folds her arms and matches his pose, jutting her chin out at him like she’s about to fight. She looks a little older than him – maybe – it’s hard to tell. She’s so short that despite her pierced ears and bad language it’s almost impossible to view her as anything but a kid (and that’s saying something since he’s barely ten himself). The dirty Doraemon jacket she’s wearing doesn’t help either.

Varon narrows his eyes. ‘I said, get lost.’

‘No way. I was here first.’

‘And I’m bigger than you, so _get lost_.’ He takes a threatening step towards her. He’s not actually about to lay into such a wimpy-looking girl but she doesn’t know that.

Unfortunately she’s either not afraid of him or is just as stubborn as he is. She matches his step with one of her own – though her step is far shorter than his and sounds far, far lighter. It’s like a chihuahua squaring off against a rottweiler. ‘Get lost yourself, asshole. First come, first served.’

‘Bigger is better, idiot – get lost before I _make_ you get lost.’

She snarls and bares her teeth. ‘I’d like to see you _try_.’

He hadn’t been going to hit her, he really hadn’t. He was still a bit sore from his earlier fight and jerk or not, it didn’t really seem fair to lay into someone so much smaller and weedier than he was.

Then she shoved him.

To be fair, Sister Maria’s stories only talked about turning the other cheek when someone smacked you in the face, not when they shoved you and tried to take your dinner for themselves.

‘Quit it!’ Varon snarls, trying vainly to get an angle for a punch as they roll around on the alleyway floor. She’s smaller but she’s tenacious; she’s locked herself onto one of his arms with her legs and is flailing madly at his face. It’s kind of like eating an octopus odorigui-style except the octopus has bony fists and he’s trying to knock its teeth out instead of eating it.

Look, he’s still _hungry_ , all right?

She lands a halfway decent shot on his cut cheek, then follows it up with the noodliest slap he’s ever felt. Or maybe she just lost her balance and landed on his face; it’s hard to tell. ‘You quit it, idiot! What kind of jerk hits a girl?’

‘Are you crazy? _You_ shoved _me_!’ He finally wrenches his arm free and slams his elbow into her ribs; she topples to the side with a yelp. Before she can get up he scrambles over to put her in a loose headlock. ‘You started this, you – _OW_!’ She sinks her teeth into his forearm and he reflexively jerks away with a surprised shout.

‘You were trying to steal my dinner!’

‘You _bit me_!’

‘You –’

Light floods the alleyway and Varon looks up just in time to receive a face full of dirty, lukewarm water. ‘Break it up!’ the cook yells, lowering the bucket. ‘Go on – get out of here!’

Fight forgotten, the pair of them scramble to their feet and sprint out of the alleyway. Back-alley brawls are one thing but Kurama’s cooks have legendarily poor tempers and are scarily accurate with their buckets and brooms – there’ll be no leftover curry for either of them tonight.

By the time Varon stops running a block or two away the dinner-thief has disappeared, much to his annoyance. He’s now hungry _and_ wet and has nothing to take out his anger on. Sister Maria’s probably going to stick him with laundry duty after her lecture, too, just to make the night that much worse. About the only good thing from the whole mess is knowing that the dinner-thief’s going hungry tonight as well – and hopefully gets a nice bruise on her ribs from that elbow shot.

No, it’s not a very Jesus-like way of thinking, but Varon’s pretty sure that if Jesus lost His dinner and got bit for it even He would be just a little bit petty about the whole thing.

* * *

By the time Varon heads to Kurama’s for leftovers again, a few weeks have gone by and he’s forgotten all about the dinner-thief. At least until an annoyed voice says, ‘Oh, great – _you_ again.’

He jerks around with a start – he’s been tucked behind the dumpster for a good five minutes already and he could’ve sworn that he hadn’t heard anyone walking down the alley. ‘Whaddya mean, me again?’ he demands – until he spots the voice’s owner, and his eyes narrow. ‘Oh. _You_.’

She scowls and folds her arms. The Doraemon jacket’s even filthier than it was last time. ‘Here to steal my dinner again?’

‘It’s not _your_ dinner, it’s my dinner. Get lost – I’m still bigger than you _and_ I was here first this time.’ He’s kind of tempted to punch her immediately but he’s already limping a bit from the afternoon’s brawl; he just wants a half-decent meal before slinking back to the church for a lecture and an ice-pack.

‘Yeah, but this is _my_ dinner-spot.’ She squeezes behind the dumpster herself but stays out of his reach.

‘Thought it was first come, first served?’

‘It is. It’s where I always get my dinner; I always come first.’

‘Not tonight you didn’t,’ he says, repositioning himself in the shadows of the dumpster. ‘Now get lost. I’m not in the mood for a shower tonight.’

She turns her back to him, peering around the corner of the dumpster warily. ‘Go to hell. Neither am I.’

Varon growls.

She gives him a middle finger without looking away from the door.

Before he can snap at her again the door creaks open. He instinctively pushes himself as deep into the shadows as he can. Strangely enough she doesn’t – she doesn’t even bother pulling her head back behind the corner. Is she _trying_ to get run off?

Whoever’s throwing out the garbage is apparently blind as anything though, and there’s no sprays of water or thrown mops. There’s not even a shout to go away. The cook’s _whistling_ as he walks over to the dumpster, for God’s sake.

Varon glares hard at the back of the dinner-thief. He might be bigger but she’s practically halfway out already (he’s got no idea how she hasn’t been seen yet; it’s got to be some kind of minor miracle) _and_ it sounds like the bags have gone in closer to her corner than his. He’s fine with the idea of fighting her but if she runs, he’s got no chance of catching her tonight – not with his ankle the way it is.

She shifts just a bit closer to the dumpster’s edge as the cook – still whistling – heads back to the door.

Varon’s gaze lingers on the grubby Doraemon figure grinning on the back of her loose jacket, then shifts to the protruding dumpster handle.

When the door closes with a familiar firm _click_ she flings herself forwards to claim her prize – or at least she _tries_ to, but gets jerked back rather harshly by the dumpster handle her jacket’s been impaled by. ‘What the –’

‘Told you I was here first,’ Varon say smugly as he scrabbles up the side of the dumpster. There’s not one but three bags tonight and, after a quick glance over the set, he grabs the two biggest ones and jumps down again. A bolt of pain shoots through his ankle upon landing and he stumbles slightly.

‘You _asshole_!’ She tries to pull herself free and the jacket begins to tear; she’s forced to almost take it off to un-spike it, cursing heavily under her breath the entire time. Huh; maybe she is older than him after all. He doesn’t even _know_ some of those words.

‘Too bad, so sad.’ He files away some of the more interesting curses for use in the park later and begins limping out of the alleyway as fast as his leg will let him. It’s ten to one that someone’s heard them by now and besides – he’s not sharing his meal. ‘Don’t worry, there’s still a bag left. It’s probably only like half-full of fish heads.’

The dinner-thief responds with another round of high-pitched cursing.

The leftovers might be lukewarm at best and have more than a few sets of broken chopsticks scattered through them, but tonight they taste much better than they normally do.

* * *

As the weeks pass, Varon finds himself almost enjoying the nights that he heads to Kurama’s for leftovers (except for that one time the store shut early and he arrived after she’d eaten literally everything that could be eaten, even the fish-eyes; the resultant brawl wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it usually was). It becomes a game, almost – some kind of hybrid between hide-and-seek and Hungry Hungry Hippos with the occasional punch-up, where the winner gets a decent meal and the loser gets scraps or goes hungry. Sometimes everyone gets bruises and nobody gets any food but they get much better at holding off brawling until after the chefs have left.

One night, though, Varon squeezes behind the dumpster earlier than usual to find the dinner-thief already curled up in a shivering ball against the alley wall.

‘What’s up with you?’ he asks cautiously. It’s a bit of a stupid question – she’s pasty, sweaty and wheezing like a dying squeaky-toy – but truth be told, he wouldn’t put it past her to be faking sick to get the jump on him and he really is quite hungry tonight.

She cracks open her eyes and stares at him blearily. It takes a few seconds for her to focus enough to see him. If she’s faking, she’s doing a damn good job of it. ‘S’it… closing time already?’ Her voice is raspy and slow.

‘Not what I asked.’

‘…oh. What’d… what’d you ask?’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

She blinks. ‘Cold,’ she eventually says, dragging her fingers to pull the ripped and dirty jacket a little closer around herself. In all the time he’s known her she’s never worn anything else. That being said, it normally doesn’t reek as much as it does tonight – she smells like she’s come from the dumpster itself. ‘And tired.’

‘Uh-huh.’ He glances at the door (mostly out of habit; the place isn’t due to close for another hour or so) before looking back at her with a frown. ‘You shouldn’t be out here like this. Look at you; you’re a mess.’

She wheezes; it takes him a moment to realise she’s trying to laugh. ‘Where else… would I go?’

‘Your home? Inside somewhere at least, not out in an alley.’

‘Don’t… don’t have one.’ She looks down at her lap. Rather, she runs out of energy to keep her head up and slumps forwards with another wheeze, beads of sweat dropping onto her lap even though she’s still shivering. ‘B’sides. Need food.’

So does he, but he doesn’t say as much. ‘If you don’t have a home, where do you go when you’re not waiting here to steal my dinner?’

‘Anywhere.’ She feebly tries to shrug but only manages to slightly twitch her shoulders. She doesn’t try to argue about the leftovers, either, which only solidifies the suspicion that she’s not faking it.

‘No family? Not even a house?’

Her leg twitches this time. It’s the lamest kick he’s ever seen and that’s really saying something. ‘Wouldn’t eat… outta bins… if I did.’

Varon glances at the shop again. Just in case. ‘Then how come I’ve never seen you at the church?’

‘…church?’

‘Over on block eighty-one. Y’know, down from the park?’

With an effort, she manages to tilt her head back up to lean against the wall. Sweat’s still beading off her forehead and she doesn’t seem to have the energy to keep her eyes open anymore. ‘Never… heard of it. What’s… there?’

Yeah; she’s definitely sick. No faking, no joking. ‘Beds and food. For kids, anyway. Like an orphanage but they don’t ask where you’re from if you look miserable enough.’

‘Oh.’ She wheezes again. It looks like she’s about to say something but she runs out of energy before she can even begin and her head slumps down again, as she pants heavily. Eventually she manages to grunt out, ‘I’ll look… after dinner.’

‘Yeah, because you’re _really_ gonna be up for walking that far on your own.’

She tries to kick him again. Her leg twitches even less than it did the last time.

Varon gnaws at his lip. There’s no question that the leftovers are his tonight but it feels kind of hollow; winning isn’t fun if he’s the only one playing. It’s not like her being sick is his problem though. _She’s_ not his problem – he doesn’t even know her name – and he’s really, _really_ hungry tonight. But she’s not gonna make it to the church on her own. He doesn’t think she could even make it to the front of the dumpster. She smells half-dead and stale already – she’s not walking anywhere anytime soon.

Sister Maria would say he should help her to the church. Sister Maria would tut and lecture him about something that Luke or Matthew or some other dead guy said about helping strangers – what was that story again? Something about a samurai who found a guy who’d been beaten half to death and put him on a donkey to help him out, even though a priest and some guy called Levi had already passed by without stopping (he’s never been great at remembering the Bible stories; there’s never any good fights or cool costumes).

She hasn’t been beaten half to death by robbers and he definitely doesn’t have a donkey to put her on. She’s not really a stranger, either, and he could really, really do with some leftovers tonight. But if he takes her back to the church and tells Sister Maria it was because of a Bible story he’ll probably get dinner anyway _and_ the dinner-thief will owe him big-time. Probably. Sister Maria’s always happy when he does something because of one of her stories and she can’t be mad about his black eye if he’s helping someone, right?

Let it never be said Varon’s not honest about his motivations.

‘C’mon, then,’ he says, roughly hauling her onto his back. She’s tiny but she’s a complete dead weight right now; it takes him a few goes to get her high enough to flop her arms over his shoulders. ‘Let’s head on over.’ Sister Maria will help her, surely. At the very least it’s proof that he _was_ listening to one of her stupid Bible stories even if he doesn’t really remember all the details.

The dinner-thief doesn’t argue. She’s warm enough that it feels like he’s wearing a coat. A lumpy, shivering, stinky, sweaty coat.

‘You better not get me sick too,’ Varon mutters, starting the trek back to the church. ‘And you better _remember_ this the next time Kurama’s closes up early.’

He makes it all the way to the bridge before she manages to scrape together enough energy to speak. ‘Why?’

Varon jostles her a little higher on his back. ‘It’s called being a good – uh – samurai, or something like that. Helping people even if you don’t know them. There’s like a whole story about it in the Bible except with robbers and old men and donkeys instead of food and dumpsters.’ Or maybe there _was_ food involved; he can’t really remember. There was definitely helping at least. His stomach rumbles – Sister Maria had better be impressed enough to give him at least a snack or else he’s going to be really annoyed.

He’s only a block or two away from the church when she speaks again: ‘Sounds… stupid.’

He snorts, hoists her up higher again, and plods onwards. ‘Yeah, it kind of is. But it’s getting your stupid ass some help and it’s getting _me_ a decent dinner, so… y’know. Whatever.’

In all fairness, words have never been his strong suit. He’s much better at hitting things.

Sister Maria’s waiting when he reaches the church. Any lecture she might have given him for his black eye and bruised knuckles is forgotten when she sees the state of the dinner-thief on his back. She even smiles when he says it was because of the story about the samurai and the man who’d been robbed (before gently correcting him with _Samaritan_ , which in hindsight makes a lot more sense). As predicted, the dinner-thief is promptly bundled into one of the back rooms where Sister Maria will tend to her. And then, as gleefully predicted, Varon is given a whole bowl of reheated chicken curry – and to his great surprise, a strawberry Kit-Kat too, along with a pat on the head and the most sincere “good job” he’s ever heard in his life.

Varon goes to bed that night with a full stomach and a strange warmth in his chest.

Maybe those Bible stories aren’t _completely_ worthless.

* * *

Varon squeezes himself beneath the bathroom sink, muttering angrily to himself – he _hates_ Visitor’s Days. He hates them almost as much as he hates Sister Maria’s rule that on Visitor’s Days everyone is to remain in the main hall and reception area where the actual visitors are. He hates the fraudulently happy couples that ask him questions like he’s stupid; he hates how eager and excited the younger kids look when there’s even the remotest chance that they’ll get to go home with someone. The pinnacle of his hatred, however, is reserved for the fact that ever since Kazumi arrived and somehow managed to disappear from the hall on not one but _two_ different Visitor’s Days, Sister Maria has begun issuing a password for the evening’s meals that is only given out to those in the main hall during visiting hours. No password, no meal, no exceptions.

Even now that she’s no longer stealing leftovers, she’s _still_ taking his food away from him.

With experienced ease Varon pushes the wooden wall panel. It swings inward with a faint groan, far enough for him to slip inside the wall itself, though it’s definitely a tighter fit than it used to be. He’s going to have to figure out a new way into the walls if he keeps growing at this rate.

Prior to the password rule, Varon had been in the habit of following the rest of the crowd into the main hall before using a bathroom visit to escape via the church’s interior. Visitor’s Days were always hectic and Sister Maria was only one woman; she didn’t have a hope of keeping tabs on _all_ of her wards. All he’d had to do was make sure she marked his name off upon entry and that was that. Easy as winking. Except then a stupid couple had made the stupid decision to ask about the _stupid_ grey-eyed midget they’d seen earlier and she was nowhere to be found until long after they’d left. When a repeat performance was pulled on the next Visitor’s Day (well – the missing bit, not the questions), the password rule was put in place.

No password, no meal, no exceptions. Even if nobody asked about _him_.

He makes his way through the walls as quietly as he can. Nobody will hear him over the din in the reception room but he won’t take any chances. He had to sit through three-quarters of a Visitor’s Day last month before he could get a password and it was as near to an actual Hell as he ever wants to experience. No; he’s not risking having to do that again. Not when there’s a crack in rear wall of the reception-room that he can try eavesdropping from instead.

Unfortunately it very quickly becomes apparent he’s not the only one to have thought up such a brilliant way around the new rules.

‘How on _Earth_ did you get back here?’ he growls, his annoyance doubling when she doesn’t even jump at his words – she merely looks over her shoulder like she was expecting him. She’ll probably claim her stupid imaginary dragon friend (sorry; _spirit_ , as if that somehow makes the monster on the trading-card more real) told her he was coming or something dumb like that.

Nine-year-olds. _Pfeh_.

Kazumi returns his scowl with interest and plants her hands on her hips. ‘Through the walls, idiot. What are _you_ doing here?’

It’s been almost four months since he brought her back to the church. Without the Doraemon jacket and with a good scrubbing she looks much less street-rat than she used to. She still _fights_ like a street-rat though – there’s teeth-marks scabbing over on his left arm at the moment.

Sister Maria said that the idea of being a Good Samaritan was helping people without expecting anything in return. As far as Varon’s concerned that’s a really stupid reason to help anyone, particularly if they keep snarking at you and getting you into trouble and then biting you when you try to knock a bit of sense into them. And _especially_ if it was only good for the one Kit-Kat.

He folds his arms. ‘Getting the password, stupid. Shove over.’

‘Shove over yourself.’ She shuffles to the left anyway though; she’s not quite stupid enough to risk getting caught in here either. Then she frowns at him.

‘What?’ he demands.

‘I would’ve thought you’d be out there waiting for a family to pick you.’

Something sick and heavy throbs in his gut and Varon reflexively clenches his fists. ‘Don’t need a family. Never have, never will. Besides, they’re only after the tiny brats anyway – if you head out now they might still think about picking you.’

‘Asshole.’ She folds her arms too and turns back to the crack in the wall, watching warily.

It’s his turn to frown now. ‘Why aren’t _you_ out there?’

Her shoulders tense up. Eventually she tries to pass it off as a very delayed shrug. ‘Don’t need another family either. I’d just end up back here anyway.’

‘Didn’t think you liked getting beat up that much.’

‘I’m not the one with a black eye at the moment.’

‘And _I’m_ not the one missing a tooth right now.’

She shoots him a glare. ‘It was going to come out eventually anyway, jerk.’

Varon snorts and shoves himself beside her to peer through the crack. ‘Sure. Keep telling yourself that.’ It takes him a moment to focus but it looks like most of the couples are still playing with the younger tots; Sister Maria’s hovering around in the background as usual, looking almost relieved at how smoothly everything’s going. Really, she should be _encouraging_ him to stay away from these things. ‘I take it she hasn’t given anyone the password yet?’

‘Yeah, not yet.’ They watch in silence for a while before she shifts a little and asks, ‘So why don’t you want a family?’

Varon almost punches her on reflex. ‘They’re stupid,’ he finally says, jamming his hands in his pockets. He’ll get even with her later but for now, they need that password without getting caught. ‘A family’s just a name for a bunch of people sharing a house and pretending to love each other. At least Sister really does care about us even if she makes us do chores and stuff.’ Then, because damned if he’s going to be the only one feeling all angry and gross, he asks, ‘Why don’t you?’

‘I told you – I’d just end up back here anyway. Families want good kids, not broken ones.’

Varon glances at her. She sounds almost sulky despite the scowl on her face. ‘So that’s how you ended up behind Kurama’s? Tossed in the trash with all the other broken stuff?’

The glare she gives him would be a lot more effective if she had both her front teeth. ‘They didn’t throw me _away_. Just – just left me behind.’ For a moment she looks surprised at her own honesty before she shakes her head and the scowl returns. ‘What would you know? You probably got dumped here directly.’

Discarded memories of constant moves, shouting matches, bloody sheets and broken belts dredge themselves up unasked for and he’s unable to resist the urge to kick her shin. ‘I found my way here myself,’ he snarls, taking a very un-righteous amount of satisfaction in her recoil and hiss of pain. ‘I didn’t need anyone to carry _me_ here.’ And it’s the truth, too – Sister Maria had helped him to limp inside but she definitely hadn’t carried him.

‘I didn’t ask you to.’

‘You still haven’t thanked me.’

‘I would’ve –’

‘Been fine on your own; yeah, yeah.’ He’s heard the line a dozen times before. ‘Lay off it already. You were in bed for like two whole weeks after you got here – you would’ve died in that alley and you know it.’

She gives her shin one last rub before hobbling back over to the crack. ‘Would not,’ she mutters, ‘and you’re lucky I’m fucking hungry or I’d kick you back twice as hard.’

Varon raises an eyebrow. ‘She’ll wash your mouth out with soap if she hears you speaking like that.’

‘She can’t hear me right now, can she?’ Kazumi raises an eyebrow right back at him. ‘So it doesn’t fucking matter.’ It would almost be intimidating, if she came up higher than his shoulders or had all her front teeth. Or if said missing front tooth didn’t result in a tiny bubble of spit forming and bursting as she swore.

Varon suppresses the urge to snicker. ‘Oh, it doesn’t _fucking_ matter?’

‘No, it doesn’t _fucking_ matter.’ This time the bubble’s big enough to surprise her when it pops and the resultant cross-eyed squeak as she fails to look at her own chin is enough to send Varon into a fit of muffled snickers.

Hard fingers jab into his ribs and he buckles over with a soft grunt. ‘Oh, give it a break,’ he says, still sniggering. ‘You looked ridiculous.’

‘Did not.’

‘Did too – it doesn’t _phlucking_ matter.’ He crosses his eyes and pulls the dumbest-looking face he can manage, slurring the curse so he can spray as much spittle as possible. ‘See?’

This time she _does_ kick him. He wouldn’t say it’s twice as hard as his kick but it probably wasn’t that far off, either.

Varon hisses and jumps backwards, grabbing for his newly-aching calf. Except as he hops away from the wall his ankle catches on an exposed piece of masonry and he overbalances backwards. He manages to stifle the reflexive yelp before it escapes his mouth – he’s well-practiced at shutting up when he has to. Unfortunately, gravity and the church’s interior have other ideas about staying silent, and when he lands he lands against a rather brittle outcropping of rock which collapses with a _very_ loud **_crack_**.

As he rolls to his feet, still hissing to ease the pain, Kazumi instantly snaps to peer through the crack. She goes pale. ‘ _Shit_ , she heard that!’

Cold terror spikes through Varon’s chest. A missed meal is _nothing_ compared to the punishment they’ll get for being inside the actual walls of the church, _especially_ on a Visitor’s Day. Shit, _shit_ –

To his surprise Kazumi grabs his hand and hauls him to his feet. ‘This way, quick!’

Rather than heading back the way he came Varon finds himself being dragged through a maze of wooden struts on the far side of the building. He’s got no idea where she’s taking them but he doesn’t have time to ask; she’s crawling over and under bits of masonry like a spider and he has to scramble to keep up with her, especially with the ache in his calf. Before he’s even really had time to process what’s going on she skids to a stop and starts trying to wedge her fingers into the wall.

‘Through here,’ she says, hissing as she attempts to pull the panel open. ‘If we can get through here we’ll be –’

‘Let me at it.’ He doesn’t wait for her to move; he shoves her aside easily and then – with only a single grunt of effort – he wrenches the panel back. He holds it open just long enough for her to scramble through before following her. He emerges amid hanging panels of fabric and for a split second he’s convinced they’ve somehow travelled to another world entirely before she claps a hand over his mouth and gestures to be quiet. A thin slit of light appears as she cracks open a door and Varon can finally make out what the fabric is – habits and robes.

Oh; they’re in Sister Maria’s wardrobe.

 _Shit_ , they’re in Sister Maria’s wardrobe.

Varon feels his mouth go dry. How the hell are they meant to get back into the main hall without being caught from here? How the hell did Kazumi know to bring them here in the _first_ place?

She’s insane. Certifiably insane. And there’s no _way_ they’re getting lunch, let alone dinner, and they’re going to be damn lucky if they don’t get a solid caning as well.

After what feels like a lifetime (but was probably closer to five seconds) she pushes the door open enough to slip out, pulling him after her. He almost asks her what the _Hell_ she’s playing at but she puts a finger to her lips; _be quiet_ , she mouths. Or at least he assumes that’s what she’s trying to say. She could very well be talking about how absolutely dead they are when Sister catches them.

She leads him out of Sister Maria’s room and through the winding halls. When they near the doors to the main hall she gestures for him to stay put before disappearing around the corner.

He’s dead; so very, very dead. She’s left him here, he knows it. She’ll be back around the corner with Sister Maria hot on her heels and a smug expression on her face and –

‘Now!’

Varon jerks, hesitates for just a moment, then scrambles around the corner.

Kazumi’s standing in the shadows of the huge doors, one foot between them, and beckoning him frantically. How she got them open without anyone seeing he has no clue but he’ll be damned if he’s going to worry about that right now – he wedges himself through the gap without a second’s pause. Amazingly enough there’s only one or two other kids in the hall right now and they’re all preoccupied or far, far away from the doors. She follows him silently and the pair of them slip inside with no-one the wiser. _Somehow_.

Kazumi immediately snatches up a tennis-ball and skitters away from him, lobbing it in his direction with an overly loud, ‘Your serve!’ as the doors click shut behind them.

‘Huh?’

‘No really, it’s your serve!’

‘What do you –’

She curses under her breath and points at the side wall. ‘Just throw the ball, idiot!’ she hisses.

Mere seconds after Varon’s lobbed a weak throw at the wall, Sister Maria rounds the doorway from the reception-room. When she spots them, she frowns for a moment and Varon has the most awful feeling that they’re about to get into trouble, _big_ trouble for being outside the hall on Visitor’s Day and being inside the walls and being _in her wardrobe_ – but then she gives a brief shake of her head, gives the pair of them a relieved smile, and returns to the reception-room.

He lets out the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. ‘ _Jesus_.’

‘Pretty sure she’d wash your mouth out with soap for that too,’ Kazumi says, waiting the customary single bounce before returning the serve, but she looks as relieved as Varon feels. ‘And that was a rubbish throw.’

‘You gave me like a second’s notice!’ He smacks the ball back, much harder. ‘You can’t just go sprinting through walls and bedrooms and stuff and then suddenly throw me a ball and expect me to be ready to _play_ with you.’

She manages a good return shot, even if she does have to shake her hand a little after hitting it. ‘It’s called a cover story, idiot. I wasn’t gonna wait for you to get caught standing there stupefied and then dob me in.’

Varon almost says “I wouldn’t have dobbed you in” before reconsidering; no, no, he absolutely would have. There was no _way_ he’d be the only one going hungry with a sore backside. It makes more sense than her suddenly developing a conscience and saving his ass for her own satisfaction, anyway.

‘Give it five minutes and we can probably hide again until dinner without being asked too many questions.’

He raises an eyebrow as he sends the ball spinning off at a steep angle. ‘We?’

‘Well, you can stay here if you want, but I’m not.’

‘Fat chance. Though you’re mad if you think I’m going back in _that_ way.’

The rally continues for a little while in relative silence before she speaks up again. ‘How _did_ you get into the walls, then?’

‘There’s a loose panel underneath the bathroom sink. Bit of a smaller gap but way easier to get to, as long as you remember to unlock the door before you go through.’

She snorts, then grunts as she sends her serve wide. ‘Smart.’

‘I’m not _just_ muscles, you know.’ He has to skid to make the return shot and sends it ricocheting high. ‘Plus, you can get outside easily if you follow the pipes to the laundry.’

‘Huh. Nice.’ She mistimes her jump and the ball goes sailing over her outstretched hand; Varon darts to grab it before it can roll under the pews. ‘For the record,’ she says, as he smugly tosses the ball one-handed, ‘there’s a passage from the cupboard that backs onto the kitchen pantry. You can’t get out of the pantry ‘cos of the lock but there’s usually crackers and stuff in there. Just in case you don’t get the password.’

He raises an eyebrow. ‘And you’re telling me this out of the goodness of your heart?’

Kazumi rolls her eyes. ‘No, I’m telling you so that now _you_ owe _me_ the thanks.’

‘Are you kidding? If anything that just makes us even.’

‘Nah; that score was settled when I saved us from getting busted just then,’ she says, but she’s kind of grinning. He is, too; adrenaline’s a pretty good mood-booster. ‘The kitchen makes it so you owe me.’

Varon snorts. ‘As if. I told you about the bathroom and the outside too.’

‘Outside’s worth less than the pantry.’

‘Says who?’

‘Me. Duh.’

He lobs the ball against the wall again, harder this time, and laughs as she squawks and scrambles to intercept it. ‘That’s stupid. I’ve been here longer and I say the outside’s worth just as much as the kitchen.’

‘My stomach says the kitchen’s worth more.’

‘Pfeh. If you get outside you can get Kurama’s – that’s way better than the pantry.’

‘Only if _someone_ doesn’t steal the leftovers first.’

‘You live here now – you can’t claim it’s your dinner-spot anymore.’

She actually laughs at that. Not hard enough to miss the ball though. ‘Maybe. I do kind of miss their katsu-don though – Sister’s just isn’t the same.’

Varon’s stomach rumbles at the crunchy fried memory. Unfortunately, he has to agree. ‘Bit easier to eat though.’

‘Eh; fingers are fingers.’

‘You’re a grub.’

‘No, just hungry,’ she corrects him, and sends the ball flying wide.

This time he does miss it and it goes rolling underneath a pew. He could try to fetch it, of course, but all this talk of katsu-don has given him a much better idea. ‘Wanna go see if there’s anything left over from their lunch rush, then? It’s Visitor’s Day; there’ll only be sandwiches here anyway. And we can always go raid the pantry if we miss the dinner password. Y’know – if you’re not lying about it.’

She raises an eyebrow. After a moment, though, she gives a shrug. ‘Sure, as long as we split it halfway.’

‘You’re tiny; you don’t need a full half.’

‘You’re calling yourself fat?’

It’s his turn to laugh. The noise catches him by surprise, but he’s not exactly mad about it. ‘I’m as fat as you are tall. C’mon, then – before she starts calling us in.’

Sadly there’s no katsu-don today but there’s still a decent haul of special curry scraps and half-finished bento boxes; more than enough for a sizeable lunch, even split two ways. They’re too late returning to the church to snag the day’s password but she was being honest about the path to the pantry so it all works out. Between the two of them they even manage to raid the fridge as well – Varon’s strong enough to hold the door ajar enough for her to slip through the gap, even with the lock – and by the time they split to head for bed (after one minor scuffle over the last Kit-Kat), Varon’s decided that having a dinner-thief as a friend is much preferable to just beating the snot out of one now and then. He gets much more food this way.

* * *

Varon sprints through the back-alleys of Komatsu like a man possessed – or at least a child possessed. ‘You just _had_ to say today was quiet!’

‘You punched him without looking!’ Kaz yells, scrambling to keep up with him. It’s been several months since she became Kaz instead of Kazumi and a best friend instead of a friend but she hasn’t grown all that much, and even though she’s definitely the faster runner it doesn’t mean much when his legs are still that much longer than hers. ‘If you’d looked first you’d have seen how many there were but _no_ , you just _had_ to take a shot –’

‘Shut up, idiot! They’re still coming!’ He grabs a streetlight to turn a corner. Behind him, Kaz curses and has to throw herself into a slide to make the turn.

In his defence, Aoji really _was_ asking for a punch. Literally. It wasn’t Varon’s fault that the teenager had such a punch-able face, what with that stupid pompadour haircut and ratty little eyes. It wasn’t Varon’s fault that Aoji and his gang were more concerned with their hairdos than with learning to properly fight. And if Kaz had been a bit quicker to point out that there were more than the usual number of teenagers milling around behind him, well maybe they wouldn’t be running so hard right about now.

Varon skids to take another corner, then another, hoping that the twists and turns will throw their pursuers off. He’s never one to back down from a fight but he’s not stupid enough to stick around for a guaranteed thrashing. Behind him, Kaz follows, gaining on him with each corner; behind her, rather further back, come the shouts and calls of their pursuers. Aoji’s crew aren’t what Varon would call dangerous but numbers are numbers… and over the last year or two Varon has humiliated _quite_ the number of them, even before Kaz came along with her gnashing teeth and scratchy fingernails to back him up.

So maybe this is _kind_ of a little bit his fault. She still could’ve done a better job at warning him, or at the very least planning their escape a bit better than shoving him in the direction of down-town and yelling at him to run. She’s meant to be the one that leads them through the winding alleyways to safety when they’re too badly outnumbered – he’s the muscle which by default makes her (sometimes) the brains, and that stupid imaginary friend ( _spirit_ ) of hers is apparently good with directions. Better than he is, at any rate, even if she’s ten now and should _really_ be over such childish things as talking to trading cards.

As if to prove the point the next corner Varon turns leads him down an alley that terminates in a very tall and solid brick wall and he’s forced to skid to a hard stop. Unable to stop in time, Kaz slams bodily into him and the pair of them are sent tumbling forwards in a blur of yelps and flailing limbs.

‘You idiot, what the –’

‘Dead end.’ Varon rolls twice and scrambles to his feet, wincing slightly at the new graze on his elbow and the aching patch on his back that’ll eventually become a chin-shaped bruise. Kaz has already gotten herself to her knees; she’s pinching her nose with one hand but otherwise looks fine. ‘C’mon, quick, before –’

‘ _Found ‘em_!’

He turns on his heel just in time to see five – seven – eight – _nine_ teenagers spill into the mouth of the alley, Aoji leading the pack with a sadistic, satisfied grin. Beside him Kaz mumbles something he can’t quite make out. Knowing her, it was probably something Sister Maria would’ve sent her to bed without dinner for saying – though it definitely seems warranted right now.

So there’s nine opponents. Six are bigger than him and all of them are bigger than Kaz. He knows he can comfortably take on three, maybe four at once before things start getting dangerous but even if Kaz could take on more than two at once that’s still at least three or four too many for them to handle safely.

They’ll be all right, though. They’ll probably have to swing by Kurama’s for dinner tonight and they’ll definitely get a good lecture from Sister Maria as she tends to their new lumps and bumps but they’ll be all right. Aoji’s a bit of a coward and hates for his hair to get too messed up; all they’ve got to do is get him to break and the rest will follow. Aoji’s crew aren’t the brawliest of gangs to begin with and once Kaz starts biting them again they’ll probably back down a bit (he’s not about to complain about her dirty fighting habits when it’s not _him_ getting bitten).

Varon clenches his fists a little tighter as his heart begins to pound. ‘We’ll be okay,’ he says, only mostly believing it. ‘Might be tight, but we’ll be –’

‘This,’ Aoji says, as he draws a crappy-looking pocket-knife, ‘has been a _long_ time coming.’

‘Shit,’ Kaz says.

Varon watches in horrified silence as the overwhelming numbers morph into overwhelming force. Sticks. Clubs. Knuckledusters. _More_ knives.

Kaz takes a step back.

Hoots and shouts begin to echo from the gang in front of them. Varon scans the crowd frantically, searching for any obvious weak links, but even their weediest member’s got full head on Kaz and a very metal-looking bat. Fists are one thing. Weapons – especially _knives_ – are a whole other game. If there were only a few of them they might be in with a shot but with _nine_ of them…

He can hear his heart in his ears now – but Christ, this is going to _hurt_. ‘Cowards,’ he snarls, raising his fists regardless. ‘You that scared of us you need numbers _and_ weapons?’

Aoji snorts. ‘Need nothing, Ronnie – we just wanna make sure you learn your lesson this time.’ He tosses the pocket-knife coolly and only nearly cuts himself catching it again. ‘So which of you’s gonna go first?’

Maybe they can spread the numbers thin and skirt around them out the alleyway. Maybe they can get out of this with just a few cuts and bruises and fractures and stab wounds. Maybe if he can get Aoji’s knife or one of those bats they’ve got a shot –

‘Varon, I’m sorry,’ Kaz murmurs.

He doesn’t take his eyes off the knife. ‘What the hell are you –’

‘Death Volstgalph.’

And then suddenly instead of nine armed youths, Varon finds himself staring at the horrifyingly familiar wings and tail of an honest-to-God motherfucking _dragon_.

For a split second everything is silent. It’s like the world has frozen. His brain certainly has.

Then the alleyway is _filled_ with the echoing shrieks and howls of nine terrified teenagers as the dragon roars, spreading its wings to damn near touch the alley walls, and Varon can only stare stupefied as the gigantic red, grey-blue and very, _very_ real dragon takes one heavy step towards Aoji and his gang.

That’s it; he’s officially crazy. Lost his mind. Totally and completely. Or maybe Aoji stabbed him in the goddamn brain or something and this is just a dying hallucination because he’s seeing Kaz’s stupid trading card made _real_ and what the _fuck_ –

Volstgalph twists its head back towards him. No, not him – it’s looking beyond him, behind him. It gives an almost disappointed snort that sends a cloud of warm, thick and _very_ real smoke over Varon’s face, and then just as quickly as it appeared it’s gone again in a wisp of black mist. There’s absolutely no sign of the others beyond a smattering of dropped weapons on the ground and fading shrieks of fear.

Varon blinks. Hard. His fists are still raised but the alleyway is empty but for him and her and what the ever-loving _Christ_ – ‘You… you saw that too, right?’

She doesn’t reply. At least, not with words. She’s wheezing too hard to speak.

He spins around. Kaz is no longer standing beside him; she’s down on her hands and knees, shaking madly and gasping for breath. At first he think she’s crying because of the water drops on her hands but as he kneels down beside her he realises it’s sweat. She’s sweating like she’s just run a marathon. Shaking like it, too.

‘C’mon,’ he says, grabbing her shoulder a bit too roughly, ‘don’t – don’t go freaking out on me, ‘kay? I mean – it’s gone now…’

It’s gone now. Like it was there in the first place. Except there’s still scratches in the dirt from its claws and he still kind of smells of smoke and she’s doubled over, almost collapsed from exhaustion. After she apologised to him for nothing and then said its name and then it _looked_ at her.

He’s only eleven, but he’s not an idiot. Not _that_ much of an idiot.

‘I’m – sorry,’ she wheezes, finally.

Varon drops his hand from her shoulder like it’s burning him. He can still hear blood pounding in his ears and it feels like he’s almost going to throw up. So he does what he always does when he feels like running away: he clenches his fists, stands his ground, and gets loud. ‘You said Vol was imaginary!’

‘Spirit,’ she wheezes, ‘I said – he was a _spirit_.’

He gestures at the still-empty alleyway. ‘Spirits don’t fucking do _that_!’

‘I – know.’ Her voice warbles a little. ‘I did.’

His mind is still spinning at a million miles an hour. There is nothing, _nothing_ in his life that has prepared him for _anything_ like this. Not being threatened with death, not with goddamn _dragons_ , not with his best and only friend somehow claiming to be responsible for said dragons…

She manages to slowly look up at him. To his great surprise, she looks like she’s about to cry. No – she _is_ crying; the sweat from her forehead isn’t responsible for the tears tracking down her cheeks.

Kaz doesn’t cry. Kaz _never_ cries. Kaz gets mad and gets loud and throws crappy punches before trying to bite but Kaz doesn’t _cry_.

Kaz doesn’t usually collapse from bringing trading cards to life to scare off people threatening to kill the pair of them, though.

She hiccups. ‘I’m – I’m sorry.’

Kaz also doesn’t apologise. Not directly. Not to _him_.

Varon rubs his forehead. There’s definitely no knife handle there; this isn’t a hallucination. His best and only friend just brought her imaginary trading-card friend to life to save _their_ lives and there isn’t a single one of Sister Maria’s Bible stories that even comes _close_ to telling him what the fuck he’s meant to do now. Turning the other cheek only applies when someone’s hit you first. There’s definitely some kind of David and Goliath thing going on here but he’s pretty sure they’re on the wrong side of the story this time. She’s not a stranger anymore so the Good Samaritan story is out. Dragons weren’t one of the plagues of Egypt (though it would have been so much cooler if they were) – and wouldn’t that still put them on the wrong side of the story anyway?

Kaz tries to push herself to her feet but she can’t even get her elbows straight before her arms give out, sending her face-first to the ground.

If Aoji and his crew come back, she’s not going to be able to pull that trick a second time. She can’t even stand. He could be long gone by then but she definitely won’t be – she’s not going anywhere under her own steam for a while, by the looks of it. He could leave right now, write the whole afternoon off to some kind of temporary insanity, and when she never came back to the church he could just pretend it was like she’d never been there at all. Like he’d never had a friend, never mind a best friend, never mind a dragon-summoning freak of a best friend who said things like “sorry” for saving their lives.

It’s one of the easiest decisions he’ll make in his life.

Varon kneels back down beside her and grabs her by the arms, roughly hauling her onto his back. She’s not quite as tiny and she’s a complete dead weight right now; he’s stronger now though so it only takes him two or three goes to get her high enough to flop her arms over his shoulders.

‘You –’

‘Shut your mouth and save your breath,’ he says roughly, jostling her up as he gets his arms around her legs for a piggy-back. ‘We tried to run away from a fight, you took a real heavy hit to your gut and there weren’t any knives or dragons or _anything_ strange about it, all right?’

She hiccups again. ‘I –’

‘I told you, shut up. You can tell me shit later. Y’know, when you can actually talk again.’ His own voice trembles and he has to swallow hard as he rises to his feet. ‘And if you try to say “sorry” one more time I’ll throw your stupid ass in the river when we go over the bridge.’

He makes it out of the alleys, down the road and all the way to Kurama’s before she manages to speak again. ‘Asshole.’

Despite himself, Varon grins. Just a little bit.

* * *

As it turns out, Varon doesn’t really have a dragon-summoning freak for a best friend after all. She’s still definitely a freak but it’s not her fault, not really – it’s that stupid little circle-topped cross in her ear that’s to blame. An ankh, she says it’s called. And it doesn’t let her summon _dragons_ , moron, it lets her use cards for real. It just so happens that Vol is the only card she has and therefore the only card she can use.

No, she won’t do it again. Didn’t he see how messed up she got last time? It’s _hard_.

At his insistence and not a small amount of guilt tripping (apparently using it means she has to “open a link” to it or something, and there’s voices or souls or whatever inside there that tell her to do things that get her into trouble) she shows him the other stuff it can do. It takes a _lot_ of nagging and a cross-my-heart-hope-to-die pinky promise not to tell anyone else ever but she eventually relents, as she always does. It can’t do much cool stuff – no flying, no big balls of energy, nothing really neat like on Super Sentai or Dragon Ball. It does let her sneak around like a ghost when nobody’s watching her though, which would be much cooler if it wasn’t the reason she can _never_ be found when it’s time for the boring chores unless Sister Maria already knows where she is.

He doesn’t say as much, but he thinks he’ll start watching her a lot more closely of an evening. She’s got _so_ many months of not taking out rubbish and washing dishes to catch up on.

She also shows him the knife that it can make. It’s a wicked, twisted gold-looking thing covered in carved pictures and not a small amount of dried blood. It looks heavy as anything but when she passes it to him it weighs almost nothing; it’s like it’s made of the smoke it appears and disappears in. She says if it stabs someone through the heart she can pretend to be that person perfectly – she’ll look like them, sound like them, and know all the things that they knew.

 _No_ , she’s never used it. She’s never going to use on anyone. She’s not a killer even if the soul-things in the ankh tried to make her one; she won’t even have Vol attack anyone if she can help it, just scare them off. Besides, if she really wanted to look like someone else she can just change to look like one of the souls in there instead, just with her own height and weight and… oh. Right. She wasn’t actually going to tell him about that.

She doesn’t give him a straight answer when he asks if that’s her real face or her real name. Not even when he tells her that his name wasn’t really Varon, it was Valon, just nobody could say it right and he forgot how to write it and he actually still _kind_ of remembers the other place where he came from (kind of, maybe, not really anymore). She says that if she ever had a different face or name it doesn’t matter – she’s Kaminoko Kazumi now, and this is her life, so it doesn’t really matter if she used to be anyone else.

Varon asks if maybe her not-answering has anything to do with how she said she was broken on that Visitor’s Day, or that second chance she sometimes talks about trying for, or that the soul-things _tried_ to turn her into a killer.

Kaz punches him, a lot harder than she usually does, and things rapidly devolve into a scuffle that only ends when he gets her in a headlock where she can’t bite him.

When they’ve both got their breath back and she’s finished sulking he asks her the one thing that he doesn’t get: if she can do all that stuff, and she can disappear and change faces and summon cards and shit, why is she still here at the church at all?

She looks like she wants to punch him again. She nearly does, too, but she drops her fist back down before it’s even risen to her chest. She tries to answer once, twice before finally shaking her head – she stays because she doesn’t have anywhere else to go. There’s no home eagerly awaiting her return, no far-off adventures calling her name, and she’s not willing to use the ankh unless she _absolutely_ has to so all that magic stuff might as well not exist anyway. Besides, if she’d been anywhere but Komatsu, he’d be dead in that alley (or not far off it at least). It’s a good thing she’s still here, idiot.

Varon still doesn’t get it. If he could do even _half_ of that shit he’d be long gone – he’d be making crazy money as a superhero, or maybe a vigilante, or maybe even a villain if he had to (villainy _does_ seem to pay better, if he’s being honest, but he’d rather be a good guy – they win a lot more). So what if he had to listen to a bunch of voices tell him to do bad stuff now and then? He’d just tell them to shut up and not do what they told him to and it’d all be fine.

Kaz doesn’t answer that. All she says is she’s hungry and wonders if he’s ready to head back for dinner too, even though it’s only mid-afternoon.

He’s only eleven and he might do dumb things now and then, but he’s not a complete idiot. So instead of doing the rational thing and prying until she tries to punch him again he says nah, and he doesn’t much feel like waiting around in the church, but maybe they can go practice skipping rocks for a bit. Y’know, like they usually do when they want to kill time without getting in a punch-up.

It’s the first time she’s smiled since the alleyway confrontation yesterday. It doesn’t really look right, but it’s something.

There’s no shortage of smooth pebbles down by the river but the water’s running fast today. Neither of them can manage more than three or four skips before the current takes the rocks underwater. It doesn’t stop them from trying – she’s much quieter than normal and truth be told, he’s thinking a lot harder about their conversation than he usually would, so it’s pretty cathartic to just throw rocks for a bit without having to think about speaking too.

Varon hucks a pebble halfway across the river in one go. The current isn’t any slower on the far side and the rock sinks immediately with a disappointingly small splash. ‘That sucked,’ he finally says; the first words he’s spoken since they got here.

‘What else is new?’ she says and flings a rock of her own. It doesn’t get nearly as far but does at least manage two skips before sinking.

He wonders if she’s still thinking about their conversation too, or if she’s talking about it with the soul-things. Would she even want to talk to the soul-things? He knows she speaks to Vol now and then (which seems a lot less ridiculous now) but he doesn’t get the impression that she likes the soul-things enough to be chatty with them. He kind of hopes she doesn’t, anyway. It’s already unfair that she has a not-really-imaginary “friend” when he doesn’t and Sister Maria says jealousy is a sin. Then again, wrath is also a sin and Sister Maria says that “do unto others” shouldn’t mean that you _want_ to get punched, so Varon supposes a little bit of jealousy won’t send him to Hell just yet. Not on its own. He’s got plenty of time to make amends before he’s got to worry about _that_.

Huh. If there’s soul-things in that ankh, does that mean souls are real? And if they are, does that mean _she’s_ going to go to Hell for having a bunch of them in her earring instead of letting them go to… well, wherever they’re meant to go? Sister Maria seemed pretty adamant that souls were meant to be saved but he got the impression that the Bible meant it in a more airy-fairy kind of sense rather than, like, in a leftovers container for later. It wasn’t like Kaz had put them in there in the first place though. Surely that would count for something at the Gates? Though Sister Maria was fond of saying that the road to Hell was paved with good intentions…

Varon shakes his head and picks up another rock. That train of though is starting to get _way_ too academic for his liking (to say nothing of the clench in his stomach at the thought of either of them eventually dying). There’s nothing he can do about it anyway – why bother thinking about it? ‘Normally it’s you that sucks.’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Yeah, right.’ Her next rock gets launched nearly all the way to the far side. Varon would be more impressed if it hadn’t been half the size of his. She’s more than half his size _and_ she could probably get Vol to launch it fifty times as far as he ever could (if she pulled the dragon out again, anyway…).

Yeah, okay, so he might be a bit jealous. And more than a bit pissed off at all the beatings they’ve taken that she _could_ have prevented but didn’t. If he had power like that he’d be using it so much better than her… but he doesn’t have it. She does. She’s the one who could disappear at the drop of a hat to go fight crime for a living, even though she’s so small that it’s embarrassingly easy to overpower her (as long as you stay clear of her mouth, anyway). She’s the one who could steal whatever she wanted without ever getting caught, even though she doesn’t even join him in stealing Pocky from the corner store (though now he thinks about it, he’s _absolutely_ going to get her to start doing that; maybe he’ll offer to not drag her along with him on bin duty if she does). She’s the one who could leave the church behind and never be found again, if she really, truly wanted to… and he’s not jealous of that last one like he is the others, but it makes his stomach churn a bit all the same.

‘Hey,’ he says, a bit too roughly. ‘I know you said you weren’t gonna go anywhere, but like… you’re really not gonna go anywhere, right?’

She shakes her head. ‘I told you I don’t have anywhere else to go. Why would I?’

‘Cos sometimes you do dumb stuff if I’m not there.’ He whips the rock out across the water; it skips exactly once before sinking with a loud splash. ‘I dunno. Maybe one day you’ll wake up and decide you want to try that second chance after all, or just decide that you’re sick of skipping out on doing dishes and bugger off for somewhere else. I don’t know how your mind works.’

She snorts and whips a rock of her own. It skips two, three times, almost making it halfway across before it sinks down. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

He wouldn’t have needed to ask before the alleyway but he needs to ask now. ‘You promise?’

She holds up her pinky finger. ‘I’ll do you one better.’ She flashes him a grin – a _real_ grin – as they lock pinkies and shake. ‘If I go anywhere, I’ll bring you with me. Told you I’d always have your back, didn’t I?’

Varon grins back. ‘I’ll believe it when you stop leaving me to take out all the bins.’

Kaz snorts and picks up another rock. This one doesn’t even skip; it just disappears in a spray of water. ‘Not my fault you suck at hiding.’

‘You _cheat_ at hiding.’

‘It’s not cheating!’

His next rock disappears in a similar spray. ‘It is so! How is using magic not cheating?’

‘You’d do it if you could.’

‘Doesn’t mean it’s not cheating, you cheater.’

‘Shut up, asshole.’

‘ _Cheater_.’

Instead of picking up a rock she gives him a hard shove and he stumbles into the shallows with the largest splash so far. ‘Cheat that,’ she says smugly.

Varon snorts, ‘That doesn’t even make _sense_ , idiot,’ and scoops up a handful of cold water to fling at her. It catches her full across the face and she squawks, then laughs, and by the time they’re finally ready to head back to the church they’re both sopping wet and completely out of breath from laughing.

He knows things won’t always be like this. It’s a fact of life that good things don’t last forever, especially for him. Sometime in the far-off future they’ll have to leave the church and try to make something of themselves in the real world; they can’t run wild on the streets forever. Sister Maria’s made that clear plenty of times. But today, on this sunny afternoon down by the river, Varon knows that whatever happens he’ll always have at least one best friend to count on and as far as he’s concerned, that’s more than enough to take on whatever comes his way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Valon's full backstory will (probably) (eventually) appear in a standalone story, but long story short - I am far too fond of dub!Valon's ludicrous accent to not at least have _some_ kind of shout-out in this AU. Also I spent literal years thinking his name was Varon so that had to be shoved in here somewhere too. Begone, plot-bunnies!


	4. The Day Of, Part II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Technically the mission's completed, but there's now a whole new can of worms to deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for minor violence.

_‘Valon,’ Rafael started, in a tone that fell somewhere in the middle of “curious” and “horrified”, ‘What do you mean by, “it’s you”?’_

_‘Kaz,’ he said simply, and then a loud explosion sounded from the doorway behind Rafael._

* * *

Having seen the glint of the barrel at the last moment Amelda threw himself forwards and down, tearing himself free of Aleksey with a snarl. A sharp cry echoed from behind him and something clattered across the floor as he scrabbled forwards. His heart was pounding far harder than he thought it could – that explosion was a gunshot, he knew that as instinctively as he knew his colleagues were responsible for this – then a large hand grabbed his arm and roughly pulled him to his feet.

‘Nice shot, Gurimho,’ Rafael said, pushing Amelda to the far side of the doorway.

‘I had to repay the favour somehow.’ Gurimho stepped around the doorway gun-first with a victorious smirk on his face. His ever-present monocle was cracked and there was what promised to be a large bump on his temple but otherwise he seemed unfortunately unharmed. ‘I’m glad to see you _were_ paying attention to the non-verbal codes after all.’

‘Didn’t help you much,’ Amelda muttered, rubbing his wrist.

Rafael jerked his head to the floor. ‘Get the guns, Amelda. He’s down but not out.’

He jerked his head around a little too quickly. He’d thought –

‘We need a soul, not a corpse,’ Gurimho said. His weapon was still firmly fixed on the now-kneeling figure across the room.

Gone was the emerald-eyed and blonde-haired child; in her place knelt a blue-eyed, pepper-haired, Slavic-looking man and Amelda now recognised that pointed nose and obstinate chin from the images provided by Master Dartz. Both their hands were pressed to their right side. Blood seeped through their fingers and their teeth were gritted, right eye closed in pain. Their open left eye wasn’t looking at him, though, nor even Gurimho and his weapon – only Valon, who seemed as fixated on Aleksey as Aleksey was on him.

Amelda quickly saw the reason Rafael had asked him to get the weapons: if not for the firm hand on his shoulder, it looked almost as if the youngest Swordsman was prepared to sprint across the room to Aleksey.

Gurimho waited until Amelda had Rafael’s gun trained on their target before holstering his own and drawing an empty Seal card. ‘I would offer the job to you, Amelda, but the lump on my head demands retribution beyond a mere flesh wound.’

For once Amelda found he didn’t particularly care to argue the point. The sooner Aleksey was dealt with, the sooner they could leave. ‘Go right ahead.’

‘You can’t!’ Valon made as if to run to Aleksey but Rafael grabbed his other shoulder and dragged him back.

‘Valon, control yourself.’

‘You can’t take her soul! She’s –’

‘Aleksey Volkov,’ Gurimho said, smirking widely, ‘You have fought well, but now your soul shall feed the Great Beast. In your defeat you shall one day cleanse the world.’

Aleksey didn’t look as if they’d heard him. Their gaze had yet to leave Valon. ‘Varon,’ they repeated softly, with a faint whimper of pain.

‘Some kind of magic,’ Rafael grunted, adjusting his grip to grab the struggling boy’s wrists instead. ‘Hurry it up, Gurimho.’

The eldest man smirked. ‘With pleasure.’

Green light emanated from the card as Gurimho began the familiar chant and once again Valon shouted his protest; his voice was soon lost in the ethereal winds of the Seal’s magic and Amelda was strangely grateful for it. Whatever magic Aleksey had used on the boy was almost… painful to witness. Valon’s shouts of despair reminded him far too much of the sounds of his own war-torn youth. He kept his weapon trained on Aleksey in case they made a last-ditch attempt for freedom but they never moved.

‘Varon,’ Aleksey repeated once more and then their eye finally closed with the last burst of light.

Amelda waited until their body had hit the ground before he holstered Rafael’s gun and turned back to his colleagues, face set and adrenaline finally wearing off. The realisation that he had very nearly been killed was starting to crystallise in his mind, starting to finally become real; he could suppress the shock for a while but he had no desire to dally longer than necessary. ‘I think it’s time to go.’

‘For once I agree with you,’ Gurimho said, looking over the no-longer-empty card in his hand. A smug self-satisfied smile had replaced the twisted grin. ‘We shall have to inform Master Dartz of the powers he displayed, of course, but –’

‘You shouldn’t’ve _done_ that!’ Valon roared, kicking out at the robed man. ‘You asshole, she wasn’t gonna hurt us, not after –’

‘He is _still_ bewitched?’

Rafael growled, battling to subdue the frantically bucking boy. ‘Apparently so.’

‘We may need to sedate him for the trip home; Master Dartz will surely know what to do.’

A strange voice spoke. ‘ _Master_ Dartz, now?’

Gurimho twisted and stepped back, eyes wide. ‘Do you – Rafael, do you _see_ –’

‘ _Kaz!_ ’ Valon yelled, voice high with delight.

Amelda spun to face the crumpled and motionless body on the ground. Only, to his horror, it was neither crumpled nor motionless. In fact “Aleksey” was in the process of forcing itself to its feet, hands still firmly pressed against its bleeding side. Gone was the tanned skin, gone was the salt-and-pepper hair – he only just had time to catch a glimpse of pale skin and wild black hair before their skin rippled like water and darkened once more, the sight of which caused his stomach to churn horribly. As the black hair lightened and shortened into a mid-length dark brown mane, as their skin darkened back to a rich olive colour and their figure rose up and ever-so-slightly out, Amelda had to actively work at preventing himself from vomiting at the sheer _wrongness_ of the transformation.

‘That – that simply isn’t possible,’ Gurimho whispered. ‘This card isn’t empty! I have his soul! He can’t be –’

They spat a bloody wad to the floor, voice now high and faintly Mediterranean-accented. ‘Has _Aleksey_ soul, _mudak_. N-no mine.’ A pair of furious chocolate-brown eyes glared at the group. ‘ _Death Volstgalph!_ ’

With an echoing roar a colossal black and red dragon twisted into being beside them and for the umpteenth time in the last five minutes Amelda found himself stunned into silence, Dartz’s send-off words ringing clear in his mind: _This mission is child’s play._

Dimly he realised that the others were shouting at him – _Shoot! Kill it! Kill them!_ – and mechanically he drew Rafael’s gun yet again, finally finding his voice as he scrambled back to his colleagues. He swung the barrel between the beast and Aleksey, beast and Aleksey –

‘ _No_!’

And then it was between the beast and _Valon_ , who now stood with his back to Amelda and his hands on Aleksey’s shoulders.

‘ _Yameru_!’ he was saying, ‘Kaz, don’t attack. Vol – Jesus, it’s been a while – Vol, don’t attack – just stop! Everyone! _Stop_!’

‘Valon, get out of the way,’ Gurimho snarled, moving to stand beside Amelda with his own gun drawn again. ‘We have what we came for and he’s too dangerous to live. Get out of the way. _Now_.’

‘I won’t let you kill her.’ He turned to face them, cerulean eyes set and angry, blocking their shot with his own body. Ex-Aleksey’s current size was now much closer to that of the child than as – well, Aleksey – Valon’s torso was wider than its shoulders. ‘She’s my friend.’

‘She’s your _what_?’ Amelda asked disbelievingly. Valon couldn’t mean it. Hell, the boy had been working with them for nearly nine months now and had only recently begun using their _names_ properly – what the hell kind of spell was he under to refer to their current target as a _friend_?

‘My friend.’ He clenched his fists. ‘From before you lot. From before – before everything. I won’t let you kill her. Kaz, put Vol – _kare o oiharu_ – _anata ga kare o oidasanai_ , ah, fuck, _kagiri, watashi wa karera o tomeru koto wa dekimasen._ ’ His voice became pleading. ‘C’mon, Kaz.’

‘Vol?’ Rafael asked.

‘Death Volstgalph.’ He looked up at the dragon. Amelda’s heart skipped a beat as the creature looked back down to Valon, plumes of dark smoke wafting from its nostrils. Surely it would eat him, or roast him, or… or give him a slight nod…

He blinked, hard. Had he been shot? Was this a dying dream?

‘Valon,’ Rafael said, slowly and deliberately, ‘what’s going on?’

‘Put Vol away and we’ll sort this out,’ he said, looking back to the panting girl. ‘C’mon. I won’t let them – _watashi wa karera ni anata o uta semasen_. Amelda, Gurimho – guns down. C’mon, guys. Trust me. She won’t do nothing.’

‘I find that hard to believe,’ Gurimho snarled. ‘Get out of the _way_ , Valon.’

‘Amelda.’ Valon’s eyes were on his now, wide and determined and somehow afraid. ‘Amelda, I know we don’t get on all that well but fucking – call it even for _that_. Just this once.’

‘If the dragon goes, the guns go too.’

Gurimho looked at Rafael with a snarl. ‘Rafael, you cannot –’

‘I believe Master Dartz said that I was in charge of this particular mission,’ Rafael continued calmly, not removing his gaze from “Vol” for a moment. ‘As the leader, I have determined that nothing will be resolved until the threat of violence has been removed from the equation.’

‘ _Kare wa shinjitsu o katatte imasu ka_?’ she said, voice rasping.

Valon looked to Rafael gratefully. ‘Yeah. Yeah, Raf’s telling the truth.’

‘English, if you would,’ Rafael said calmly, earning himself a furious glare. ‘You’re much less likely to get shot if you stick to English, as broken as it may be.’

She scowled. ‘ _Mudak_ s-shot me. Th-think Vol no go yet.’ Her hands were beginning to tremble, Amelda saw, and sweat drops were liberally rolling from her forehead – she couldn’t stay up much longer, surely. Perhaps Valon was just stalling for time? He couldn’t seriously have meant she was his friend…

‘You _did_ have a gun pointed at our friend’s head.’

‘Y-you point gun at m-me.’

Rafael shrugged. ‘We had our orders. Gurimho, show me that card.’ For a few moments the room was silent (beyond her ragged breathing and Valon’s constant stream of murmured reassurances, anyway) as he inspected the item; eventually he looked up, eyes determined. ‘Technically, we have completed our mission. We have the soul we were sent after.’

‘Rafael, she is too dangerous to be left alive,’ Gurimho snarled. His gun was still firmly fixed on the pair across the room. ‘Not to mention she has Master Dartz’s name courtesy of that impudent brat – we cannot simply leave her here and hope she bleeds out before –’

‘We aren’t leaving her –’

‘Alive, yes, very good Valon; we aren’t leaving her _alive_ –’

The dragon twisted to face Gurimho with a deep snarl and he flinched, turning his barrel on the creature instead; Amelda briefly considered following suit, but really, if the monster chose to eat the pompous jackass he wouldn’t really mind all that much. He kept his weapon on the paling girl.

‘No no no, don’t attack! Don’t attack!’ Valon yelped. ‘Kaz, don’t attack him!’

Her right leg trembled, wavered and then gave out, sending her back to her knees with a stifled groan. ‘ _W-watashi_ –’

‘I won’t let them.’ He glared at Gurimho, who glared right back. ‘Promise. _Pinky_ promise.’

‘Valon –’

‘ _Enough_.’ Rafael held up a hand, pinching the bridge of his nose with the other. ‘Enough, all of you. As the current mission leader, I’m making the call that this situation falls well and truly outside of the parameters we were given. This is beyond the scope of our mission. We were ordered to take souls, not lives.’ He fixed a cold glare on Gurimho. ‘Or had you forgotten that particular order?’

‘This is an exceptional circumstance.’

‘I agree. But that doesn’t excuse avoidable bloodshed.’

Amelda ground his teeth. He knew that tone all too well. ‘You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?’

‘Perhaps.’ Rafael took a step towards the younger pair, ignoring the hiss of smoke sent at him by the dragon. ‘Kaz. Is that your real name?’

Valon remained standing in front of the now-kneeling girl, staring resolutely at Rafael. ‘Kazumi. Kaz’s just what I call her.’

‘Kazumi, then. Do you have any weapons on you?’

‘Rafael, you cannot seriously be considering –’

‘As I said, this is beyond the scope of our mission orders. We will return her to Master Dartz and _he_ will decide what will be done with her.’

‘You can’t –’

‘Master Dartz will decide what to do with her,’ he repeated firmly, tone clear that there would be no further discussion. Sirens began wailing outside and he returned his gaze to the girl with a grimace. ‘Weapons, if you would.’

‘N-no… no have. Just bag mine.’

‘You are signing our death-warrants,’ Gurimho snarled.

Rafael walked over to the pair. ‘I am willing to let Master Dartz be the one to decide that, Gurimho. This is _my_ mission. You will follow my orders.’

Valon’s eyes lit up with cautious hope. ‘You mean –’

‘As of this point, Valon, she is our prisoner.’ He regarded the pair coldly. ‘Kazumi, dismiss the dragon.’

At the word “prisoner” her eyes had narrowed. ‘Who s-say I… I l-let you?’

‘Return as our prisoner or bleed out here.’ He ignored Valon’s protests, keeping his eyes fixed on her. His tone softened slightly. ‘I give you my word no harm will come to you while you are under my guard.’

She made a noise that was half bitter laugh and half cough, breath coming in ragged wheezes. ‘G-guess no… no make – ah – _f-fakku_ , _sore wa don'na chigai ga arimasen_.’ Her eyes slid over to focus on Valon and they softened; for a moment, Amelda thought he saw fear in them. ‘ _S-sore ga hidoku iku baai, kore wa anta no seidesu._ ’

With a quick glance to Rafael – and one last glare at Gurimho – Valon turned and knelt, careful to keep himself between the monocle-wearing man and Kazumi. ‘It won’t. Raf’s a good guy.’

‘ _Moshi… moshi anta g-ga sō iunara._ ’ She wearily tilted her chin to the dragon, which inclined its head slightly before vanishing into black wisps of shadow; the moment it vanished she doubled over, Valon’s grip on her shoulder the only thing preventing her from landing face-first on the ground.

To Amelda’s surprise Valon picked her up easily, one hand under her knees and one around her shoulders; she audibly snarled at the pull on her wound but Valon didn’t respond, his gaze fixed firmly on Rafael. He didn’t say anything but the glint of thankfulness in his blue eyes was clear to see… as was the clear fury in Gurimho’s.

Amelda holstered his gun. ‘I think you’ve established that no, you can’t set things on fire by glaring at them, Gurimho,’ he said evenly. ‘You’ll need Botox if you keep that frown up.’

‘I didn’t ask your opinion,’ he snarled, but he too holstered his weapon. ‘Fools. If she doesn’t bring down the helicopter while –’

Rafael glowered. ‘I thought I’d made it clear this matter is decided.’

‘You always were a soft touch for children,’ he spat, turning on his heel and storming out of the door. ‘If you imbeciles wish to fall to your death when that _thing_ summons her beast during flight, be my guests. I will return to the rendezvous on my own.’

‘Hope you get lost in a snow-bank,’ Valon muttered.

A small smirk twitched Amelda’s lips. For once he agreed with the youngest Swordsman. On the matter of their prisoner, however…

Rafael sighed heavily, stooping to pick up her blood-specked satchel from the ground. After a quick glance to confirm there was nothing immediately dangerous inside he looked back to the remainder of the group. ‘At least we won’t have to put up with him for the flight back. Amelda, transport if you would. We’ll attract too much attention otherwise.’

He reached for his Orichalcos stone, carefully watching the girl in Valon’s arms. Either the wound was more serious than it appeared or whatever magic she’d used was more taxing than he’d thought – she seemed halfway unconscious already, switching her gaze between him and Rafael through wary half-lidded eyes.

‘Amelda _wa herikoputā ni modotte kimasu_ ,’ Valon was saying. ‘ _Ikuraka no hikari to sōon ga arudeshou, shikashi, sore wa anata o kizutsukeru koto wa arimasen._ ’

Her bleary gaze slid over to him and he narrowed his glare in return.

For once, he actually found himself hoping that their employer was not in a charitable mood.

* * *

‘I am sure you can appreciate that I do _not_ appreciate being summoned from the island to Jixi on such short notice.’ Dartz looked over the group of four standing silently before him and frowned. ‘I was told you had an excellent reason as to why you brought a child back from your mission, Rafael. Please do enlighten me.’

Rafael shifted uncomfortably; Amelda shot a glare at Gurimho, who seemed to be wavering between smug satisfaction and irritation. ‘We completed our mission according to the parameters you set, Master Dartz.’

He waved his hand flippantly. ‘Indeed. I saw the tablet in the Hall of Souls fill with the soul of Aleksey Volkov. That does not, however, explain _her._ ’ The cause of his annoyance was not present at the current meeting; she was still sedated in the facility’s on-site infirmary, where he had ordered she would remain until he had decided what to do with her. Valon had not been pleased to be dragged away to one of the various conference-rooms for their debriefing – but then again, he wasn’t pleased with a lot of things, so Dartz was not overly concerned.

‘She… she _was_ Volkov, Master Dartz.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

Gurimho finally spoke. ‘She has magic, Master Dartz.’ He glared at the three Swordsmen with ill-concealed annoyance. ‘I had intended to simply put her down after it became apparent taking the soul did nothing but –’

‘Put her _down_? She’s not a dog, you –’

‘ _Valon_ ,’ Rafael growled and the boy fell silent, glaring furiously at Gurimho.

Dartz affected a neutral expression and returned his gaze to the oldest of the group. ‘Magic, you say?’

‘She can change her appearance and summon monsters at the least.’ Gurimho folded his arms, the very picture of offended authority. ‘That impudent brat blocked my shot before I could take it, though, and then these fools acquiesced to his demands that we bring her back here.’

‘I felt you might wish to see her for yourself,’ Rafael said. ‘Valon seemed to have her under control and we sedated her for the flight back; it was a mitigated risk.’

‘But still a risk, you idiot! What if she had –’

‘Enough, Gurimho,’ Dartz said. Silence fell across the room once more.

‘We thought you might not have known about it, given that you failed to warn us during the briefing,’ Amelda said. He bowed his head semi-respectfully as he spoke; Dartz briefly considered pushing him as to what exactly he meant before forcing his attention back to the situation at hand. Amelda would not have meant offense. Taking his annoyance out on him would be counterproductive.

Instead he looked to the youngest of his Swordsmen with a heavy sigh. ‘And you, Valon. You claim to know her.’

‘She’s my friend.’ Valon’s expression was one of confidence but his constant fidgeting and tense muscles spoke of a different emotion. ‘From the church. Before the – the prison.’

‘And you say she has always had this magic?’

He nodded, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head. ‘Vol came first – least, that’s what she told me – but yeah. Since she was just a kid.’

‘Vol?’

Rafael answered. ‘Death Volstgalph. Like my Guardians.’

Gurimho disguised his snort as a cough and Dartz elected to ignore their petty squabbling. The spirits were real enough, he knew – he himself was not capable of seeing them anymore, not since the Orichalcos had come to him, but it was enough that he had long stopped questioning Rafael’s claims. The familiar warm presence of Eatos’ spirit had been looming since the start of their discussion; he had felt something colder, something darker in the background and it was gratifying to know he hadn’t entirely lost his connection to the spirit world. ‘It was here earlier, was it not?’

‘It reappeared when we sedated her. It followed us when you called us here, then disappeared when you entered. Eatos says it’s back in the infirmary now.’

‘Given you told her the needle was to numb her side instead of knocking her out, s’not surprising,’ Valon muttered under his breath.

‘And why is that?’

He sullenly looked to his feet. Dartz was pleased to see that contrary to Gurimho’s appraisal Valon was still loyal – he clearly wasn’t happy about answering the questions, but he was doing so. ‘He’s kinda like Eatos is for Raf. Sometimes helps her and sh – stuff.’

‘Very interesting. What did you say her name was?’

‘Kazumi.’

‘No surname?’

‘Uh… Kaminoko, same as me, but that was only what Sister Maria gave her.’

Ah, yes; that church _had_ been an orphanage. Not terribly surprising, really. He made a mental note to still have the name investigated anyway; Valon’s old jail records used that surname after all and from very hazy memory she should at least have accessory charges linked to his first-degree murders. ‘And what do you know about her magic?’

Valon shot another glare at Gurimho, who smirked widely in return: ‘If you didn’t want to answer questions, you reprobate, you shouldn’t have protected her.’

‘She’s my friend you old –’

‘ _Valon_ ,’ Rafael growled, for the umpteenth time, and he fell silent yet again. ‘Answer Master Dartz’s question.’

He folded his arms sulkily. ‘It lets her use cards for real, like when we use the Orichalcos in duels, except she’s gotta use her own energy to do it. The face stuff’s different – she’s got like a group of soul-things somewhere and she can change between them whenever. Doesn’t do it much though.’

Dartz brought his fingers to his lips thoughtfully. Well, she wasn’t an Orichalcos user; that much was clear. The collection of “soul-things” certainly sounded interesting – and also vaguely familiar. ‘Anything else?’

‘She’s almost impossible to spot if she’s sneaking around and if she guts someone with the dagger she can use their face too. But, like –’

‘What dagger?’ Rafael asked. ‘I thought she didn’t have any weapons.’

Valon shifted uncomfortably under the older man’s hardening frown. ‘Uh… she didn’t. It’s something that comes with the magic, or something like that. She doesn’t have it ‘til she wants it – you couldn’t take it off her. She doesn’t use it, mind –’

Gurimho stabbed his finger at the boy overdramatically. ‘See? That is _exactly_ the kind of –’

‘Enough, Gurimho.’ Dartz held the man’s gaze until he fell silent before speaking again. ‘Very well. I appreciate your honesty, Valon.’

Valon perked up. ‘Does that mean –’

‘I am not making any decisions as to her fate until I have had the opportunity to talk with her myself.’

The boy bared his teeth and looked ready to throw himself forwards but Rafael quickly moved to place a hand on his shoulder – the grip was a little too tight, Dartz noticed, but it had the intended effect all the same.

‘I will inform you when I have made my decision,’ he said with finality. ‘Do not disturb me.’ With one last glare over the four of them he swept out of the room and down the halls to the room where the target of his irritation lay. Part of him had been tempted simply to order them to drain souls until she ran empty – she was certainly weakened enough in her current state. The more reasonable part whispered uses to him, though, and the small fragment of emotion that remained had tugged hard on the dried strips of flesh he called heartstrings as he left the room.

Valon hadn’t been able to mask the pleading fear that filled his eyes as Dartz left.

* * *

Warmth.

That was the overriding… emotion? Sensation? Goddamn, why couldn’t she think of the… _impression_! That was the one. Warmth was the overriding _impression_ she had – everything was still dark but it wasn’t the cold dark she’d expected, not the dangerous dark she was used to. She felt warm. Like she was floating, almost.

She was surprised to realise she felt _comfortable_ for what had to be the first time in years.

Something niggled at the back of her mind. Something tried to speak up, to warn of caution, to tell her to be on guard… but she was so _warm_ and so _cosy_ … her body felt as if she was floating in a hot spa-bath, all lightweight and careless. _Safety_. That was the impression – warmth and safety. She didn’t need to be on guard here, surely.

She tried to remember what she’d been doing, how she’d ended up wherever the hell she was but the memories slipped out of her fingers and spiralled into the dark. The more she reached for them the further they ran. Eventually, she simply laid back, too tired to bother giving chase. She would remember eventually. She always did. Right now, it was warm and safe – and _quiet_ , she dimly registered – and she didn’t particularly care what she was forgetting. She probably would later. But that was her future self’s problem. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to remain in this wonderful welcoming darkness for as long as she could.

If this was death, she thought as she slipped back out of semi-consciousness, it wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d thought it would be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More translations! This time I can't even argue that mistakes are signifying the character's non-nativeness - and Japanese is a much more complicated language than Russian (at least to my brain). "mudak" = "asshole" (because when you're a teenager learning a foreign language, you absolutely learn the bad words first); "yameru" = "stop"; "kare o oiharu - anata ga kare o oidasanai kagiri, watashi wa karera o tomeru koto wa dekimasen" = "send him away; I can't make them stop unless you send him away"; "watashi wa karera ni anata o uta semasen" = "I won't let them shoot you"; "Kare wa shinjitsu o katatte imasu ka?" = "is he telling the truth?"; "f-fakku, sore wa don'na chigai ga arimasen" = "fuck, it won't make a difference"; "sore ga hidoku iku baai, kore wa anta no seidesu" = "if this goes bad, it's your fault"; "moshi anta ga sō iunara" = "if you say so"; "Amelda wa herikoputā ni modotte kimasu" = "Amelda is going to take us back to the helicopter"; "Ikuraka no hikari to sōon ga arudeshou, shikashi, sore wa anata o kizutsukeru koto wa arimasen" = "there'll be some light and noise, but it won't hurt you".


	5. too little, too late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a long and winding road from Sister Maria's church to Nakhodka.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for implied child abuse, violence, death and mentions of self-harm. Technically this chapter can be skipped without any real impact on the story but it fills in the gaps between The Dreams We Leave Behind and this one - if you're not fond of/keen on OC-centric stuff or are here just for the Doma guys, skip straight to the next chapter. If you don't want to explicitly spoil the ending of TDWLB, I'd also suggest skipping this chapter (though the next chapter also contains spoilers, it's much less explicit about what happens). I didn't particlarly want to put this as its own story because there's not nearly enough focus on the canon characters to justify it, so it goes here instead.

_I tried to be perfect, but nothing was worth it_

_I don’t believe it makes me real_

_I thought it’d be easy, but no-one believes me_

_I meant all the things I said_

_If you believe it’s in my soul_

_I’d say all the words that I know_

_Just to see if it would show_

_That I’m trying to let you know_

_That I’m better off on my own_

_~ Pieces, © Sum41_

* * *

No. No, no, _no_. It wasn’t fair. She’d been so _good_ , she’d done so _well_. Things were finally getting back to normal and now – now _this_ mess had happened. It wasn’t even her fault this time! Not that it had been her fault last time, not really, but this time it hadn’t even been _her_ who started the fight. They’d come after her, dammit. She’d even tried running first, for Christ’s sake; it _couldn’t_ be her fault!

The security guard’s gun is still trained on her but he’s looking past her, beyond her, at the blood-splattered alleyway behind her. At the bodies. They’re not dead – she was very careful of that – but they certainly don’t look alive. It surprises her how little the gun scares her. ‘Put your hands up!’

Her mind is a vortex of thoughts, plans, consequences and condemnations, all shouted in voices that aren’t hers. One thing is clear above the rest though: if word of this reaches her family, things can _never_ go back to normal. Nine years old with a rock was one thing. Thirteen with ancient magic masquerading as fists and knives and bats was something else entirely. The weapons weren’t hers – how could she carry that many? – but it was impossible to deny that she was the only one still standing. ‘They started –’

‘I don’t care. Hands up, _now_.’

Maybe she can add him to the pile behind her, make it look like they did it and she was just caught in the crossfire. He’s not police. He can’t arrest her. His word won’t go as far, his description won’t be as detailed (especially after some head trauma), she can knock him out and sneak away and still get home for dinner –

‘For the last time,’ he snarls, ‘put your hands _up_. The police will be on their way soon.’

A spike of reflexive panic stabs through her chest at the word. Police mean arrests. Arrests mean they take her blood. She can’t let them take her blood again – that was how they caught Allister; faces and fingerprints don’t matter when DNA matching comes into play. And she left a _lot_ of blood back in Komatsu. Oh god, they’re going to find out, they’re going to _know –_

A second guard skids around the corner and stumbles into the alley, hands on his own holstered gun. ‘Saw the cameras, what were they – shit!’

‘Call it in,’ the first guard orders. His eyes are back on her, now, and his finger’s on the trigger.

The voices are louder now, more unified: cameras mean evidence, evidence means capture, capture means failure and charges and prison this time. She doesn’t want her family to find out, does she? She doesn’t want to go back to being looked at like a monster, does she? She doesn’t want to hurt them _again_ … does she?

The intangible form of Death Volstgalph appears behind the two guards, eyes narrowed and furious. He doesn’t say anything – he _knows_ what she’s hearing, what’s she’s thinking, what she’s about to do – and he knows he can’t stop her. He’s never been able to stop her. But it’s never stopped him from trying.

Mutou Reikana wets her lips, stomach churning. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. To those around her, to her family, to Vol, to herself. She’s never meant it more in her life. ‘Raigeki.’

They have just enough time to look momentarily confused. Then the alleyway is filled with what sounds like echoing gunfire as bolts of lightning crackle through the air and within seconds, she is the only living thing left there.

Volstgalph snarls, sending heatless flames over the bodies in front of him, and gives her one last pointed stare before vanishing again.

It wasn’t fair. She’d been so _good_.

 _I’m so sorry, Keeper,_ Khalidah says, and there’s genuine sorrow in her tone.

She balls her hands into fists to stop them from trembling. She takes a deep, shuddering breath. One sob – one single, choked sob – escapes from her mouth before she can stop it.

Allister speaks up now. _What’s done is done, dear. You tried – you gave it a damn good try. Not your fault it wasn’t enough. But you need to get a move-on to fix this up before the bobbies arrive._

Other voices chime in and out in the background. Some give messages of support, of commiseration. Some are vindictive. Some are cheerful. Some are still insane as ever.

Khalidah and Allister speak the loudest, though, as they always do. They talk her through wiping her eyes, swapping her clothes for those of the dead girl, dumping her Copycat corpse into the river alongside the seven actual bodies. They guide her through blowing her nose, changing the ankh again, making sure Hina’s face is seen by the cameras as she leaves the scene of the crime. They walk her through returning her deck to the Sheut, making a believable attempt at evading the police, and finally through resisting arrest just enough to make it seem legitimate.

Hours later, when Kaminoko Kazumi has finally been left alone in her new single-person holding cell, she buries her head in the scratchy prison-issue blanket and cries quiet, muffled tears.

It really wasn’t fair. She’d been _so_ good this time.

* * *

She spends most of the next few weeks paying as little attention to her surroundings as possible, returning herself to Kazumi’s reality as best she can (it helps immensely that the medication starts to wear off during this period; she doesn’t even need to starve herself to feel spaced-out and surreal). At first there’s constant interviews and demands for answers she can’t provide. Once the Ishikawa prefecture comes back with confirmation of the headshot and DNA match, though, things get much quieter. Ironic that two dead bodies and a broken parole somehow makes understanding seven dead bodies and one missing corpse so much simpler.

They don’t bother putting her in the juvenile general population. Multiple murderers aren’t exactly common already but for six of her ten “confirmed” kills to be of other teenagers – well. She’s told it’s for her own safety. Privately she suspects they think she’d want to add to the tally. There’d been talk of putting her in with the adults but they decide against it for the exact same reason. Apparently being a teenager herself (Kazumi’s record now has her as being sixteen) wouldn’t make up for killing kids there, either. Who knew?

There’s hearings to decide whether she’ll be tried and jailed in Domino or Komatsu. The public defender assigned to her looks older than – older than Sugoroku (he’s not Kazumi’s Jii-chan now, is he?) – and it’s hard to say which of them pay less attention during court sessions. She mostly stares vacantly at the judge’s stand and avoids even risking a gaze to the public gallery. He occasionally gets up to ask pointless, meandering questions that get shut down by the prosecutor in short order. Once she suspects he actually falls asleep listening to the prosecutor’s arguments.

If it wasn’t for the fact she’s actually _trying_ to get sent back to Komatsu she’d be pretty pissed off at him. Some of the charges on her record she could have sworn hadn’t been there earlier and she was certain that she was only accessory to manslaughter, not murder, but realistically if it means that she gets out of Domino faster she can’t complain too much. Every day spent here is another risk that they find out the truth. If they’re suffering now she can’t begin to imagine what they’d feel if they _really_ knew what had happened.

The hardest day is the day that she catches a glimpse of Sugoroku watching her as they’re taking her out of the courtroom. He looks like he’s aged a decade in the short while she’s been here. Worse still, he isn’t looking at her with hatred. Her, the one who’s responsible for his granddaughter’s “death”. He just looks defeated. Disappointed. In pain.

She has to dig her nails into her palms until they almost bleed to crush down the lump in her throat. She’s just grateful that Yugi isn’t there too. Spaced-out or not, she’s not sure she could keep her composure if there were both of them there.

After a week or two it’s decided that she’ll be returned to Komatsu. The official ruling is that the pre-existing charges there trump the more significant charges here; the unofficial ruling is that they wouldn’t be able to find an impartial jury in Domino, and the juvenile wards here don’t have the capacity to keep her properly isolated in “protective custody”. Personally she thinks it’s because they’ll be able to find an even less impartial jury in Komatsu. Komatsu isn’t even a quarter of Domino’s size and the deaths of a beloved foster guardian couple at the hands of their latest charge are probably more memorable there than the deaths of two security guards and six (five) teenagers in a bustling city. Because she’s well under eighteen there’s no death penalty option in either prefecture but life sentences sound so much harsher than twenty-five years.

It’s the first time she’s actually been glad she killed him. She’ll never be glad about Hitomi, but Daisuke? Well. Different story. For now, at least.

Kazumi spends most of the journey back staring out whatever windows she can find and trying to lose herself in the view, ignoring the repeated calls to ditch or kill her guards and make a break for it. Yeah, she could. Yeah, it’d be easy. But she’s already left Varon behind once. At the very least she owes him _some_ kind of contact, right? It’s been – shit, it’s been close to eight full months since she (killed) (murdered) _ended_ Daisuke and Hitomi. He hasn’t heard from her since he turned fourteen and she ran away. She pinky-promised him she’d always have his back and she’s already left him behind once – she owes him at least this.

In Komatsu, the guards tell her he’s now in high security in a different city altogether. They tell her he’s been there for months, now, more or less since she left; that he’s spent more time in solitary confinement than gen-pop and has almost doubled the length of his charge list. She still writes him a letter. She keeps it simple (he was _not_ good at reading) and signs it Kaz, the name he always used to call her.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into a month. She writes him again and again.

He never replies.

* * *

She finds herself walking the streets of Komatsu as a living ghost once again, not even ten full months after the last time. The silence is less comforting that it was last time. On the upside, she’s doing a much better job of remembering to eat and sleep.

She held out more than a month before accepting that – for whatever reason – Varon wasn’t going to respond to her. He might’ve gone insane. He might’ve been killed. He might’ve been moved again. He might just hate her for leaving him there alone. Whatever the reason, as Khalidah said, there was no point in remaining in prison any longer. Truth be told she’s not sure there was a point to breaking out of prison either but at least she doesn’t have to wear those hideous jumpsuits anymore.

This time she’s cognizant enough to see the news bulletins and wanted posters with Hina’s face on them. They’re everywhere – lamp-posts, bulletin boards, store TVs – and every time she sees one she still feels a little queasy. One time she catches the tail-end of a news clip that features the families and friends of the Domino victims begging for information, for Kaminoko Kazumi to turn herself in. She’s not sure whether she’s relieved or infuriated that neither of the Mutous appear in it.

The Mutous. Like they’re someone else’s family.

 _They’re **not** your family,_ Khalidah says sharply. _We’ve been over this. They were Reikana’s family, not yours, and Reikana is dead._

Khalidah, aided by some of the other souls, has been guiding her through a process she calls “resetting”. She says she did it quite frequently when she was the Keeper and it helped her to feel better when she inevitably had to leave somewhere – or someone – she’d grown fond of. Allister calls it blatant denial. He admits that he doesn’t have an alternative though (he was more of a conman than a killer; he rarely had the opportunity to get attached) so he begrudgingly stays quiet.

The problem is that she still doesn’t know where she’s walking to. Last time she at least knew that she was walking _away_ from somewhere; this time she doesn’t even have that. Between the Shroud and her new faces (she changes them each time she wakes; it helps with resetting, she’s told) it’s not as if they stand a chance of catching Kazumi again. But now that she’s neither Kazumi nor Reikana she doesn’t have any idea of where she’s going or what she’s walking away from. She has no name, no home, no goal, not even a constant face.

So she continues to walk the streets of Komatsu as a living ghost, searching for the mythical something that might tell her who she is now, or where she is meant to go.

Eventually she finds herself wandering in an oddly familiar neighbourhood. It takes her a while to figure out why it’s familiar but it comes in time: this was Kazumi and Varon’s old stomping-ground. Near enough to make it back to the church in time for meals or a warm bed yet far enough to feel free and independent. There’s the corner store Kazumi used to steal boxes of Pocky from. There’s the curry shop that always bagged their food waste neatly, so Kazumi and Varon would root through their bins if they missed evening meals. There’s the park Varon used to inevitably end up fighting in. Really, that was most places in the neighbourhood, if Kazumi’s memories are accurate.

She knows it’s a stupid, pointless, terrible idea, but she finds herself walking towards the church anyway. Or at least towards where the church used to be. Kazumi definitely saw it burning down, after all. Maybe it’s been rebuilt since then, though – it _has_ been almost eighteen months since the fire.

When she arrives, to her surprise, the church isn’t there anymore. She’s not surprised by that in itself but she _is_ surprised to see that rather than a new church its lot is now taken up by a pachinko parlour. Gone are the gates, the spires, the stained-glass windows – now it’s all cheap neon lights and flashing prize displays. Burly men stand by the doorway. There’s no garden, no bell-tower, no watchful caretaker or playing children. No memorials. No plaques. No reminder of what once was, or who once lived there.

She’s not Kazumi but she clenches her fists all the same. She doesn’t have the words to describe what she’s feeling or even who’s feeling it, but at least now she knows for certain where she’s going.

A week or so later in Kanazawa Port, a living shadow slips aboard the MV _Morskaya Ten_. It’s an older cargo ship, medium size, privately run, due to leave in the next day or two for somewhere called Nakhodka. It’s crewed by old hands who say little and see even less, even before the Shroud comes into play.

She still doesn’t have a name. She won’t have one for a few more weeks yet; even then it won’t really be hers. Truth be told she’s not entirely certain what Nakhodka is – a port, a city, a country – and she has no idea how long the journey will be or what she’ll do when she arrives. But she knows where she’s going now: far, far away from here.

* * *

She stares hard at herself in the mirror. The face of thirty-eight-year-old Aleksey Volkov stares back at her. It blinks when she blinks. It moves as she moves. She _is_ Aleksey Volkov, now – more than she was ever Kazumi, and almost as much as she was Reikana – so why is she still hesitating to agree to this offer?

The _Morskaya Ten_ arrived in Nakhodka one, maybe two weeks after leaving Komatsu. As it turned out Nakhodka was a city – but such a very different kind of city than those she was used to. People sounded angry when they spoke even when they weren’t. The streets were busy but never packed, not like in Japan. There were no trains, only buses, and they _never_ ran to schedule.

It was almost as refreshing as the bitterly cold air.

She spent most of the first week stealing warmer clothes and trying to get a feel for how things worked here (there were Russians in the ankh but even Zima had been dead for more than a hundred years and things had most certainly changed since then). By week two she was confident enough to wander around without the Shroud on, though she still changed faces regularly. She still didn’t have a clue who she was or what she was actually going to do here – stay? Move on? Settle down? – but it wasn’t Komatsu or Domino so she figured she didn’t really _need_ a name or a purpose just yet. Exploring for its own sake was distracting enough for the time being.

Then, one day, a strange man approached her.

She was sitting on a park bench nibbling at something called a blini (she’d stolen it because it looked like a pancake and she was trying to figure out if she was pleased or annoyed that it was actually savoury and filled with some kind of meat) when he sat down beside her. Out of newly-formed habit she assessed him from the corner of her eyes: salt-and-pepper hair, blue eyes, at least half a metre taller than her, not visibly armed. She didn’t know if he’d noticed her or not but she opened the link to the Sheut anyway – better to be safe than sorry.

He started speaking to her in Russian. Not having ever had reason to learn Russian before arriving in Nakhodka, she didn’t really understand what he was saying. She’d picked up some basics from careful observation – “yes”, “no”, and an awful lot of curse words – but she wasn’t exactly in a position to take classes. Fortunately Zima understood Russian and was generally okay to translate. Annoyingly, she knew from experience that Zima couldn’t tell her what to say in Russian (there was no such thing as language in the ankh – on the one hand, she was very grateful for it as otherwise she’d never be able to understand Khalidah and Allister, but it did make learning to _speak_ another language incredibly frustrating) so the best she could do was listen, and hope for only very simple questions.

He asked if she was lost. He said she was very young to be out here on her own, then asked where her parents were.

 _I did say you shouldn’t use Lilly’s face without the Shroud,_ Allister said. _You’re still short enough that you actually pass for eight with her face on. Even here, children on their own attract attention._

When her stilted, garbled responses confused him, he asked if she spoke Russian. Then he asked if she spoke Chinese, then eventually English. She didn’t really want to reply to him at all but she suspected he wouldn’t leave her alone until he got a reply of some kind, so she settled for using the scraps of English Reikana learned to tell him she wasn’t lost, just waiting, and she didn’t know where her parents were. Mostly because they didn’t exist, but she wasn’t about to mention that.

He listened to her fake description of her parents. When he smiled, his teeth were smoke-stained and chipped. He said he thinks he saw them over by the curry shop; would she like to come with him to find them? The park is closing soon, after all, and it’s not safe for little girls to be out on their own.

She wasn’t scared of him. She was relatively well-fed and had a whole deck to cast with; she knew full well that he couldn’t hurt her and that she’d be walking away from this just fine. But his smile brought up deeply buried memories from someone else’s past that made her stomach churn and her skin crawl. His words conjured up the phantom scent of smoke and sweat in her nostrils, the phantom echoes of heaving breaths and soft grunts in her ears. He didn’t _scare_ her, but she very briefly felt afraid of him all the same.

His phone rang before she could answer him. She was tempted to run while his attention was drawn away; it was near sunset, after all, and shadows were everywhere. Even though she was disgusted by him she didn’t want him dead – both Reikana and Kazumi were killers and even though she didn’t have a name yet she didn’t want to go down the same path for a third time.

But then Zima told her what he was saying to the person on the far end of the phone. Zima said, through snarls and hisses, that he was referring to her as an opportunity. One worth a lot of money. She didn’t immediately understand what this meant but once the souls explained it to her… _well_.

It was very rare that all the souls agreed on something. The last time they had, she’d ignored them and paid in blood for it. This time she knew better.

So she finished off the blini (final verdict: disappointing, not a pancake) as she waited for him to finish his call, gave him an appreciative smile, and told him in broken English she would be _so_ happy for him to take her to her parents. She pretended not to notice as he walked her in the opposite direction of the curry-shop. She pretended not to be worried when he told her that her parents were just up here around the corner, he was sure of it. She pretended she didn’t see the way his smile was widening, the way he was leading her away from the crowd, or the handkerchief he was slowly pulling out of his pocket.

Out of all the ankh’s abilities, the ritual knife was the only one she’d never used. She’d never had need to perfectly mimic someone before. Swapping faces had always been enough; she’d never been bothered that said faces were only ever a few centimeters taller or shorter than her at the most, or that tattoos and scars sat weirdly without the proper bulk or body shape they were created on. Truthfully she’d never _wanted_ to use the knife – she’d seen how ruined it left the souls it took, how twisted and broken they were once the next victim was claimed and they were shoved into the Sheut proper. She’d never thought that she would want to take over someone’s entire life for her own purposes. Then again, she'd never thought that she'd want to kill someone before either, and _that_ ship had long since sailed.

It was a little harder than she thought it would be. It turned out that a surprising amount of strength was required to stab someone through the heart, even if they were being magically restrained. But by the time Aleksey Volkov strolled out of the alleyway, jacket zipped tight to cover the red-rimmed hole in his shirt, she’d warmed up to the idea a little bit. She’d barely felt nauseous this time. Even less so once she’d had the chance to go through his life.

Aleksey Volkov might have been his name but it wasn’t one he ever used. He was thirty-eight, single, with a widespread network of acquaintances and associates instead of friends. He kept his money mostly as cash as that was how he was generally paid. Occasionally he’d be paid in favours or property instead. He was a thief, an enforcer, a thug- and assassin-for-hire and generally would have been an ideal host for the Sheut. He saw kidnapping children as a profitable opportunity rather than as anything abhorrent or wrong. He wasn’t one to take for himself, if she understood correctly, but she wasn’t his first target by a long shot.

He knew people. He knew places. He knew nothing about living an honest life.

So now – a few weeks later – she finds herself staring hard at her reflection in the mirror, having been offered one hundred thousand rubles to kill a man by someone Aleksey _never_ said no to.

She doesn’t want to be a killer again. She’s barely into her teens and there’s already nine deaths on her hands (ten if she counts Reikana; eleven if she counts the one that died while Reikana was still in the wards. Oh, and twelve if she counts Aleksey, but he was barely human anyway so she’s not too perturbed by him). She’s Aleksey now, yes, but _still_ …

Khalidah sighs. _Keeper, by those standards, your target is barely human either. Besides – as you said, you are Aleksey now. Aleksey would do this without question._

Something cold and ugly rears its head in her gut. Khalidah isn’t wrong; her mark is another denizen of the Russian underworld, just one with the stupidity to backstab a contact and take a shipment of smuggled goods for himself. Yet she’s still hesitant. Death is so…

 _Permanent. Yes._ Khalidah pauses, briefly, before saying in a slightly gentler tone, _Look at it this way. If you don’t take this contract, someone else will. This man will die regardless._

 ** _Everyone_** _dies regardless,_ Allister chips in. _That’s how we all ended up in here; it’s how you’ll end up in here too. But if **you** kill him, then you can know for certain that he can’t hurt anyone else._

That gives her pause. It takes her a while to figure out why. Kazumi had felt the same way, once, when she (and the souls) (mostly Kazumi) killed Daisuke – if it meant that some nameless, potentially non-existent person was prevented from suffering the same fate, she could justify feeling bad herself. Killing was justifiable when it was to make things better for someone else, regardless of whether it also benefitted her or not. It was fine if she was hurt as long as someone else would be okay. It was fine.

It was _fine_.

She takes one last, long look in the mirror, then picks up Aleksey’s phone to confirm the contract. She still can’t really speak Russian but she can at least match the characters to pictures in her mind for a text message. It’s a slow process but it works, mostly.

It’s another week before she kills her target. In that time she spends hours upon hours with Khalidah and Allister and Zima and _so_ many others telling herself that it’s okay; that this is the best choice available to her; that she’s doing good. She still doesn’t really believe it. Some tiny, insignificant, locked-away part of her still doesn’t truly accept that what she’s doing is right. Yet she kills her target anyway, collects her hundred thousand rubles, and spends the evening after slowly adding to Reikana’s collection of scars.

Over the next several weeks, at the urging of the souls and to ease her own stupid conscience, she hunts down the ones Aleksey sold children to between the various jobs (lethal, non-lethal and everything in between) that she picks up. Each kill is easier than the last; each kill is cleaner than the last. By the time her kill count is double her age she no longer has the desire to cut after kills. Truth be told she’s not sure if that’s because she’s adjusting to it, because they’re still not human enough for her to care, because Khalidah convinced her to start collecting piercings or because Allister convinced her to start smoking instead. She tries not to think too hard about it.

She lets Aleksey’s house fall into further disrepair. He had nobody to impress and she’s not about to change that; as long as the walls stay upright and the water stays hot, she doesn’t care what happens to the rest of it. She spends most of her time there sitting in the sun-room bay window that overlooks the street. She sits there of an evening, watching the world outside pass by, with four lit cigarettes between her fingers and nothing to do but work her way through the packet. When she’s finished she retreats to the closet under the basement stairs. She was never going to use the bed on the top floor and nestling up that tiny, dark niche with its lockable door is the closest thing she feels to safe these days.

She never quite manages to convince herself that what she’s doing is good. But it’s all she really knows how to do – it’s all _Aleksey_ really knows how to do. So her texting gets faster, her Russian improves, and the pile of cigarette butts and ash in the sun-room grows.

* * *

Aleksey Volkov walks the streets of Nakhodka, tense and on edge. Since she woke up this morning there’s been a nagging, niggling feeling on the edge of her brain that says she’s forgetting something. Not a big something, not an important something – just _something_. It’s not a job (she triple-checked her messages). It’s not the water or electricity bill (she shreds them once they’re paid to make sure she can’t forget; hot showers are a luxury in this cold weather). She’s a little hungry, but she’s definitely eaten today, and she’s got all the right clothes to go with her face.

So she does what she always does when something feels wrong and she’s out of cigarettes: she goes for a long, meandering walk to find somewhere to purchase a new carton. Over the last – shit, how long has it been? – _however_ long she’s been here she’s gained a new appreciation for how calming it is to simply walk around. Especially when there’s fresh snow on the ground and the Shroud isn’t muffling that lovely _crunch_ her size-fourteen boots make. Besides, as Allister says, keeping an irregular schedule makes it far more difficult for anyone to keep tabs on her.

Today, however, walking isn’t helping as much as it normally does. That nagging, niggling feeling just simply won’t shut up. Even shutting down the link to the Sheut doesn’t get rid of it so she _knows_ it’s coming from somewhere in her own mind.

The corner store she picks is relatively busy for mid-afternoon on a Thursday. Some pretentious tourist with a monocle is arguing with the man behind the counter so she is forced to browse instead of simply making her purchase ( _odna korobka vsego samogo deshevogo_ ; one carton of whatever’s cheapest) and leaving. Maybe she needs a new lighter? No; she only got her current one a few weeks ago. She halfheartedly browses the Zippos anyway. It never hurts to have spares. Besides, Monocle is still contesting the price of a six-pack of soda and she suspects that he’ll be at it for a while longer yet (especially since the clerk doesn’t appear to understand English). Huh – does she have soda at the house still? Is that what she’s forgetting?

Annoyingly, neither a shiny golden zippo nor a bottle of strawberry Fruktime make the feeling go away. Fortunately Monocle is gone by the time she returns to the counter and the hazy-eyed clerk rings her up without attempting to make small-talk. The Zippo goes in her backpack with the carton of knock-off Camels; she opens the drink on her way out the door.

Maybe she’s forgetting dinner. She’s not much of a cook so she exists off take-aways and their leftovers; it would be just like her to forget that she’d eaten the last of her food yesterday and have to leave the house again for something tonight. But even as she thinks it she knows that’s still not what she’s forgetting. She had Chinese for dinner last night and those leftovers last for days. Maybe she should get something anyway, though. Just in case.

Her meandering route home takes her past a bakery. She pauses outside, considering whether she wants a loaf of bread or a pack of muffins, when her gaze falls upon a cake in the window: a round sponge, covered in blue fondant, with _с Днем рожденья_ iced across the top in red. _Happy birthday_.

And she realizes that the nagging, niggling feeling that she was forgetting something is because Mutou Reikana would be fourteen today.

Reikana is dead, though. She is Aleksey now – she’s been Aleksey for almost the last five months and Reikana has been dead for eight. Dead people don’t have birthdays. Well, they _do_ , but they don’t get any older. Living twin brothers get older. Disappointing dead sisters do not.

Someone in her head – not Aleksey – wonders what Mutou Yugi is doing today. It’s not his first birthday alone but it’s certainly the first where Reikana is definitively dead. Is he eating cake? Is he unwrapping a present from Mazaki Anzu? Was he woken up by Mutou Sugoroku singing “happy birthday” to him, like a year ago, or have things changed too much?

She catches a glimpse of her face in the window: salt-and-pepper hair, blue eyes edged with crows-feet, nose crooked from repeated breakings and a permanent five o’clock shadow.

Have things changed too much. _Hah_.

For a moment it feels like her lungs have collapsed; like some giant figure has her in its invisible hand and it’s crushing her chest in its palm. For a moment her throat burns and her fists clench and she almost wants to scream. For a moment – just a fleeting moment – she sees a world where Reikana and Yugi celebrated their fourteenth birthday together, watched over by a beaming Sugoroku. A world where seven other families weren’t still in mourning over seven pointless deaths. A world where Reikana was still in Domino, with a family all her own, with a _future_ –

She exhales harshly. She counts to five, breathes in deeply, and counts to five again before exhaling her thoughts along with the air in her lungs, just like Khalidah taught her.

It was okay. This was fine. _She_ was fine. She’d done the right thing by them and that was all that mattered. They had each other; they’d be okay. And she had Khalidah, and Allister, and Vol (at least, when his card wasn’t in the Sheut) – she didn’t need anyone else. She’d be okay too. Wherever she went, whatever she did, she’d be okay. Not _good_ , but okay.

She hesitates, just for a moment, and continues walking past the bakery. Cakes are for days that matter. Shit, cakes are for _those_ who matter. She hasn’t mattered for weeks. Months. Years, even. Cakes are for those with family and friends and lives of their own. For Aleksey, today is just another Thursday and there’s leftover Chinese in the fridge at the house.

Maybe one day she’ll move on from being Aleksey Volkov. Maybe she’ll stow away on another ship and travel to another city, find another low-life’s body and reset herself once more. Maybe she’ll find another church and another best friend, like Kaminoko Kazumi used to have. Maybe – just _maybe_ – she’ll even find another family, like Mutou Reikana used to have.

More likely she’ll just end up walking aimlessly through another city like a living ghost, nameless and faceless and alone once more, having left nothing but bodies and pain in her wake. She’s two for two so far. She’d like to hope otherwise but deep inside, she knows that this time won’t be any different. Nor the next. That’s if she even makes it that long, anyway… being a Keeper doesn’t seem to encourage longevity.

So for now, Aleksey Volkov simply keeps walking back to the empty, weather-worn house in Nakhodka. Her destination is cold and run-down and silent but for now, at least, it means she knows where she’s going. It doesn’t matter that she’s going there alone. Today is just another Thursday, after all, and there are plenty of cigarettes in her backpack.

When Aleksey finishes her last cigarette of the evening she lets herself blow it out like a candle. She wishes a happy birthday to the memory of a dead girl and she curls up a little tighter in the cupboard under the basement stairs.

She is not good. She will never be good again; she’s three for three on turning faces into killers and there will be no point to trying anything different for her eventual fourth. But come tomorrow Aleksey Volkov will be okay once more. _She_ will be okay once more.

Maybe tomorrow she’ll even believe it.

* * *

_I tried to be perfect, it just wasn’t worth it_

_Nothing could ever be so wrong_

_It’s hard to believe me, it never gets easy_

_I guess I knew that all along_

_If you believe it’s in my soul_

_I’d say all the words that I know_

_Just to see if it would show_

_That I’m trying to let you know_

_That I’m better off on my own_

_~ Pieces, © Sum41_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, AFAIC, that kind of thinking - "it's okay if I suffer/feel bad/etc if it means someone else doesn't have to suffer/feel bad/etc" - isn't healthy over the long run. There are certainly situations where it might be the best choice available but generally speaking it not only robs the "someone else" of the chance to make their own decisions (including whether it would actually result in them feeling bad or not in the first place), it also means that you yourself suffer a lot more than you otherwise would have. Relationships grow shallow because there's so much you can't talk to them about. Resentment breeds when they don't display appreciation or gratitude for what you've "done for" them, if they ever know about it at all. And all that self-talk justifying your actions on the grounds of being a good person rings pretty hollow when you find yourself isolated, miserable and without anyone to share the burden with.
> 
> TLDR: you don't become a mafiya assassin as a tweenager because you're a mentally healthy person that makes good decisions. Talk to your friends and/or family instead of shouldering it all on your own. Ideally before you have to resort to writing Yu-Gi-Oh! fanfiction in your late twenties because psychologists are expensive with long waiting lists and you still can't make yourself talk to your "friends" honestly. Or becoming a shapeshifting assassin for the Russian mob, but hopefully that's much less of a problem for you.


	6. The Day Of, Part III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has his plans already, but opportunities like this are rare to come by.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for implied child violence.

Dartz eyed the unconscious girl critically. Kaminoko Kazumi. He had all but forgotten that name. How many years had it been since he arranged the burning of Valon’s church? At least two, possibly three – after ten millennia, the short-term tended to blur together somewhat.

No matter. He remembered the feeling of her soul perfectly fine: fear, pain, confusion and loss. That was all still there, albeit almost overwhelmed by bitterness and anger. Evidently the passage of time had not been kind to her. Hardly surprising given the circumstances under which his Swordsmen had found her. He could have cursed himself for overlooking the opportunity to take her earlier but at the time Valon had been the one with the green light deep in his soul – the marker of the Orichalcos, the sign that he was to be watched. She had not. She _still_ did not. Then again, if he looked closer, her soul wasn’t _quite_ the same as it had been back then… and nor was her face.

There hadn’t been anything particularly interesting about her soul back then either, at least not that he’d noticed – he really hadn’t paid much attention to anyone around Valon once he’d been shown the boy. He recalled being moderately surprised when she joined Valon in the fray against the “arsonists” (followed by highly amused as she went down not five seconds in from a well-placed blow to the head). Once her visits to Valon in jail had stopped, though, he hadn’t so much as thought about the girl anymore – watching anyone without a material link to the Orichalcos was an immense effort at the best of times and he had his three Swordsmen to worry about.

Perhaps that had been a mistake.

He touched one hand to the fragment of Orichalcos that he wore around his head, placing the other hand on the girl’s forehead as he closed his eyes. Instead of the familiar gentle descent into darkness that he expected, however, he found himself surrounded by a whirling maelstrom of formless faces and sounds.

Dartz pulled back with a hiss, surrounding himself in an aura of green light; the noise died down slightly but the chaos around him remained. Evidently Valon’s description of “soul-things” had been more accurate than he’d thought. So many faces, so many memories… gods above, how had he missed this? Yes, true, he’d only been glancing remotely, but he’d only felt the outline of one soul then – he had still only felt one soul scant seconds ago, and only one soul when he found Volkov several days ago. Yet Valon had known about it. That meant it had to be due to an artefact or relic or _something_ that wasn’t an intrinsic part of her. The question was: what?

Pushing the thought aside for the time being he reached out for the nearest form. When that proved to be the soul of what seemed to be a medieval peasant he ignored it and reached for another; this one pulled itself away with an affronted hiss, revealing itself as a Basque-era courtier.

Dartz scowled. This would not do. There were too many for him to filter through each one in the hopes it was her true soul – he needed answers. To get answers he needed memories. To get memories he needed her actual soul, not one of the ones held by whatever relic she’d found. In her drugged state he doubted she could actively hide it; this left the question of how best to find it.

The answer came to him in an instant.

He conjured up the thought of Valon and reached out into the darkness.

One after another the various souls came in contact with the thought of the boy and turned away, uninterested. Undeterred he pushed on, driving deeper and deeper into the maelstrom. Slowly the chaos began to fade and quiet; eventually his surrounds were almost entirely empty, save for the occasional curious form who, after a moment of inspection, would inevitably turn away and wander back into the dark. He had just been contemplating giving up the search when he spotted it.

It was only a small soul, a young soul; female from the looks of it, though he couldn’t make out much beyond an oddly familiar mane of black hair and pale skin from this angle. She was sitting with her back to him, knees drawn up to her chest and staring at _something_ in the darkness. He couldn’t make it out. It didn’t particularly concern him, though, since the moment he extended the thought of Valon towards her she stiffened and twisted to face him.

This was undoubtedly the soul he’d been searching for.

Slanted violet eyes held on the projection for a second before sliding through and on to him. The brief glint of hope in them faded. ‘You aren’t Varon.’ Her voice held the faintest hint of an accent – Japanese, he suspected, though he wasn’t sure whether he’d gleaned that from her appearance or her voice, since languages were irrelevant in places like these. She sounded younger than she’d looked in reality. Then again, this face was nothing like the one of the girl in the bed or the church.

‘No,’ he agreed, dismissing the thought of Valon.

She held his gaze for a moment. Her eyes narrowed slightly. ‘You’re not one of the usuals. Who are you?’

‘A friend.’ He slowly began closing the distance between them.

Surprisingly, she didn’t make any attempt to move away; she simply watched him with dull, tired eyes that looked much older than the rest of her face. ‘Right. That’s why I know you so well,’ she said bitterly. ‘How do you know Varon?’

‘Why are you searching for him?’

‘I asked first.’

He allowed a small smile to show. ‘Varon – or as he is now known, Valon – is a… _friend_ of mine.’

‘Can’t be.’ She turned back around to rest her chin on her knees, her back to him once more. ‘He didn’t have anyone but me.’

‘That was a fair while ago, though, was it not?’

‘I… I don’t know. I guess.’

‘Will you answer my question now?’ He was almost beside her and she had yet to move away; at this point, he knew she would not escape his grasp. There was no rush, though, so he was content to extract what answers he could through idle conversation first.

‘Huh?’

‘Why are you searching for Valon?’

Her shoulders tensed. ‘I tried to find him when I came back.’

‘Came back from what?’

‘Stuff.’ She reached up to scratch the back of her head with one small hand. ‘Had to do some stuff. But he wasn’t there when I came back, and then I had to go again. I thought I’d found him… I really did.’ A tone of sadness entered her voice. ‘I guess I was wrong again.’

He stopped barely an arm’s length away from her. ‘No, my dear; you found him.’

At those words she spun around, half-rising to her knees and staring at him with wide, excited eyes. ‘Are you –’

‘No, I am not Valon. As I said, he is a friend of mine. You were not wrong to say you found him – though technically, he found you – but he is not here right now.’

‘Can you take me to him?’ A hesitant light of hope had entered her eyes.

Dartz’s smile grew wide and he extended a hand. ‘Of course, my dear. Come with me.’

She took his hand without even a second’s hesitation and in an instant he found himself awash in a swirl of memories.

When he returned to the world outside after what felt like years he made no attempt to mask the wide, victorious smirk on his face. He could have fallen to his knees in exultation and praise for the Orichalcos (for this _had_ to be its doing, despite the lack of a marker and interference from her relic – it was too perfect for sheer coincidence). But he forced himself to remain standing still and quiet beside the bed of his prisoner, who was still under the effects of the sedative and would be for a short while more.

He could not afford to celebrate just yet.

With a twist of his wrist he had turned her chin to the side; with a second, he pushed her hair back just enough to uncover _it_. There, just as her memories had shown him – a golden ankh perhaps an inch and a half long, attached via a single solid link to a metal bar across the top of her right ear. He cautiously touched it. When nothing adverse occurred he gently lifted it, being careful not to pull on the piercing itself; there was no obvious way to release the item short of cutting the chain or ripping the bar from her and he had no desire to cause her further harm. Not yet, anyway.

It was heavier than its size would suggest and covered in hieroglyphics on both sides. Her memories had been clear on its location and its powers but not so much on _what_ exactly it was; there was an odd sense of loathing associated with it, though strangely this loathing was not extended to all of those held within it. He turned it carefully, translating what hieroglyphics he could. It seemed oddly familiar though his Egyptian was incredibly rusty – he’d have to meditate on it later. Occasionally, he reflected, there were downsides to having ten millennia of memories to sift through.

He gently released the ankh and let her head sink back to the pillow. She would be waking soon; even in her sedated state he did not want to risk antagonising her. Of course she was no danger to him – not with his own power, not with the drugs that were in her system – but it would be infinitely easier to control her if she was not uncomfortable with him from the start.

* * *

Her head was fuzzy. Her tongue was fuzzy. There was an odd sensation of burning somewhere in her body – several somewheres, really – but she couldn’t quite figure out where. She could hear a strangely familiar group of voices but they sounded like they were underwater… it was noise, but not intelligible noise, and she didn’t think she had the energy to attempt understanding them.

‘Hello, dear child.’

 _That_ voice was clear enough.

The world swam into view as she opened her eyes. This… this wasn’t the house she’d been holed up in. This was clean. Warm. There was something light covering her body, something firm and soft beneath her head. She could hear the faint whirr of fine machinery and a distant roar that sounded like thunder. For a moment she saw dark eyes across the room – dark, fearsome, somehow irritated eyes – but in an instant they were gone, and she was staring blankly at a grey wall.

‘…wake.’

The voice had kept talking, she realised – how had she forgotten about the voice already? – and she looked blearily around for its source. Things blurred and spun with the slightest move of her head; it was a fair few seconds before her eyes could refocus enough to see the voice’s owner.

Mismatched gold and green eyes glinted at her, somehow in line with the easy smile on the strange man’s face. He was nobody she knew but somehow he felt familiar – like a half-forgotten uncle, maybe, or an old family friend. Not that she had (or _had_ had) either, but the feeling remained. ‘Kazumi, so they say,’ he said, and in her confusion she wasn’t surprised he was speaking her native tongue.

‘Nyuh.’ Her tongue was thick, stupid, dry. The stranger’s white robes billowed as he tilted a glass of cool water to her lips and she eagerly accepted it – too eagerly, something said, he could be an enemy – but what enemy would give her water and know that name? Why would she even _have_ enemies? Confused, she swallowed thickly and tried again. ‘Huh.’

‘Do you know where you are?’

The question amused her, somehow. How would she know where she was if she didn’t even know whether she had enemies or not? ‘Nuh.’ God, that stupid tongue of hers. Why was it so heavy?

His smile widened. ‘Do you not want to know?’

Did she? No, not particularly.

He leaned forwards slightly, strands of green-blue hair drifting towards her. They looked… soft. The irresistible urge to touch drove her to try leaning forwards; the moment she tried to push herself up a dull pain seeped from her side and she sunk back with a hiss.

‘You were injured,’ he said, before she’d even asked. Pale, lean fingers brushed over her shoulder. ‘Moving is perhaps not in your best interests.’

_A loud noise. Sharp, burning pain. Four loud voices._

‘Whah?’ She swallowed and tried again. Her tongue was moving more normally now but the fog in her mind had yet to clear. ‘Why?’

‘Do you not remember?’

_Green light. Another burning pain, deeper this time. Something is gone. The voices are not._

‘Gone. Something’s… gone.’

The man nodded approvingly. ‘Very good. Yes, something of yours is gone.’

‘Why?’

‘They did not understand. They thought you had cast a spell on him.’ His voice softened slightly. ‘They were only doing their job.’

Him. _Him_. Not this him, not green-haired him –

_Violent blue eyes. Blurred brown hair. Arms out, hands wide; don’t attack –_

‘What is your name?’

She answered without thinking, giving him the last one she’d been using – ‘Aleksey Volkov.’

His eyes creased a little. ‘That was not what I called you.’

Her shoulders twitched in a lazy shrug. She’d been called many different things in her life. Something in the back of her mind cried out in warning, cried out in reminder but it was too far away for her to care. Names didn’t matter. ‘Wha’ever.’

‘You sound upset.’

She didn’t deign to respond to that; she _was_ upset. Her body hurt, her head was filled with fog and nothing around her made sense. Something in her vaguely suggested that she lie to him. It felt important that she did but she had no idea why. ‘Wha’sit to you?’

He sat down on the bed next to her legs and waited until her eyes met his before he spoke again. ‘Valon sounded the same when I first met him.’

A face instantly came to the front of her mind and any pretence of calm was thrown to the winds. ‘Varon’s here?’

The man’s smile returned as he placed a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder. ‘Do not push yourself, child; yes, _Valon_ is here. He was the one who brought you here. The others would have killed you – he saved your life. Do you remember that?’

She hadn’t, but now she did. The old house, the strange lights and noises, the men with guns, and in the last place she’d ever thought she’d look he’d been there. ‘Yeah!’

‘How do you know Valon?’

Ignoring the voices in her head that hissed she was a fool she told him everything. The streets. The fights. The church and Sister Maria. Jumbled, confused words spilled over one another in her haste to explain it – after all, the sooner she was done, the sooner she could ask the question that she’d been asking ever since she returned from… from there. ‘Where is he?’

The strange man – who had listened to her scrambled tale without once losing that smile of his – shook his head. ‘All in due time, dear child, all in due time.’

No. She hadn’t come all this way and gone through all that hell to _wait_ when she saw him only… only…

‘You have been unconscious for several hours now,’ he supplied, before she’d even thought about asking. In her hazy state that didn’t cross her as strange. ‘Again, they were afraid you might have caused trouble – what with that fantastic ankh of yours.’

Had she told him about the Sheut? She couldn’t remember – Varon wouldn’t have told him about it; Varon pinky-promised and crossed his heart, hope to die that he’d never tell a soul about it, which only left her. But she didn’t just _tell_ people… surely not.

The fog in her brain lifted for a scant moment, just long enough for her to dimly realise that there was something _wrong_ with the whole situation before a wave of dizzying exhaustion returned her to a comfortably confused state. ‘How…?’

He reached into a pocket and withdrew a green stone – the same kind of stone that sat on a chain on his forehead, the same kind of stone that sat large and proud on a long chain around his neck. Without speaking he took her hand and placed the stone in her palm.

* * *

_She can taste metal on her lips. Wet, hot, salty metal. Her chest hurts, like it does when the gym teacher makes her run laps because she tripped the jerks picking on him, and there’s something slick and heavy in her hands._

_He is staring at her with tear-filled eyes and she knows something is wrong._

_She takes a step towards him and he scrambles back, tears of fear mingling with the tears of pain. His gaze moves to the thing in her hands and she looks down; it is a jagged, slightly rounded rock, covered in blood. Not hers. Not his._

_Her stomach rebels and the taste of salted metal is replaced with burning bile. This is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong. She just wanted to help. She just wanted to make them stop –_

_‘Oh,_ shit – _’_

 _She doesn’t recognise the voice, doesn’t turn to see if she recognises the face. She doesn’t need to. She can see the way_ his _face twists with a new wave of sobs. She can see the sick fear in his eyes and knows without question that he will never look at her the same way again._

Run, _a voice whispers in her head. The word is picked up by other voices, repeated over and over until it is all she can hear –_ run, run, run run run runrunrunrunRUN _–_

_The next thing she recalls is vomiting profusely behind a dumpster in a strange alley, her thoughts a whirling mess of pain and fear and confusion in voices that aren’t hers. Her chest is burning, her stomach is twisting in on itself and her head feels almost ready to explode._

This isn’t him. That’s not – Oh. Oh dear. We shouldn’t have – You _idiots_ – That’s not me. _The voices fall silent briefly, then one tentatively speaks up again._ We thought you were someone else.

_But who else would she be? She is a twin, yes, but she is not her brother and –_

_Tear- and fear-filled violet eyes fill her vision, blocking out the darkening red stains on her school uniform. Her stomach turns over yet again and she retches up acidic bile. Hot tears burn tracks down her cheeks._

He’s your brother? – Oh. – How did you even – You utter _imbeciles_ , she’s just a – Child, you should try to hide. _The last voice is firmest, speaking in a tone that reminds her of her mother; warm and somehow comforting but leaving no room to argue._ You don’t want them to find you.

 _Without knowing why she crawls into the gap between the dumpster and the brick wall. She_ does _want to be found. She wants them to find her so she can tell them it wasn’t her fault, she didn’t want to do it, she didn’t mean to do it – it was a mistake! She was just listening to the adults like a good girl should, and it was a mistake!_ Everyone _made mistakes. Mama said that as long as you were sorry and learned from it, making mistakes was okay._

_She can taste blood on her lips again and something deep inside her knows that this is bigger than the time she broke Papa’s teacup._

_She curls into the smallest ball she can imagine and shuts her eyes, praying that when she opens them everything will be back to normal. It has to be. She’s got homework due tomorrow that she has to do tonight, and on the weekend Meron and ‘Shiro and Ritsuko are coming around to play, and Mama and Papa were saying something about maybe getting take-away for tea on Friday –_

_The mother-voice speaks again._ We are sorry.

_She is, too._

_She doesn’t think it’ll be enough this time._

* * *

‘Nobody understood, did they?’

She blinked, hard, and the grey dirt of the alley was replaced by the pale grey of the strange room once more. No. No, they didn’t understand. Nobody listened and nobody believed her and –

A cold teardrop splashed onto her chest and with a start she realised it had come from her own eyes.

The man’s hand was curled around her own and she jerked back instinctively, keeping the strange stone clutched tightly within. He was no longer smiling; in fact, now that she concentrated on him (she had to, because concentrating on her own pained breathing and the reason behind the burning in her eyes would break the little resolve she still had) he even looked a little concerned. A little sad. Pitying.

The fog in her brain hadn’t yet cleared so she screwed her eyes shut and dropped her head back to the pillow. For some reason it made sense that he knew what she’d recalled – later, much later, she would be confused by this and remember only that it somehow made perfect sense then – so she didn’t bother to clarify anything. He knew what she’d seen and right now, that was enough.

‘I understand.’

‘S’if.’

‘You truly believe yourself to be the only one who has been abandoned by their family?’

‘They didn’t abandon me,’ she snarled, but even as the words left her lips a throb of pain shot through her chest.

He saw it and smiled softly again – not mockingly, merely in acknowledgement. ‘They left you behind, child. That is abandonment.’

‘They had to.’ Her voice wavered and she tried to swallow but her mouth was dry again. He offered the glass once more and she gulped the water down greedily. ‘Wasn’t their fault. Couldn’t go ‘til I was cleared, or something. I couldn’t… I couldn’t go with them right away.’

‘Not the first time, no. But then they did not search for you, did they?’

‘They weren’t there!’

‘But they could have been. They _should_ have been. That is what family is supposed to do, is it not?’ He touched the pendant on his forehead, some unreadable emotion filtering into his gaze.

She couldn’t stop the burning behind her eyes. ‘They said –’

‘They lied.’

Two simple words, spoken softly and plainly.

They sunk into her brain, drifted deep into her mind and settled in the very bottom of her soul.

They lied.

‘Why do you think they still kept you at arm’s length when you returned?’

She didn’t look to him as he talked; it was all she could do to keep herself breathing. They lied. But they didn’t lie. They never lied to her. They were family and they loved her even though she didn’t deserve it and _they lied_.

‘Why do you think they never came to Komatsu to join the searches?’

‘They were –’

‘In another prefecture, yes. But you were their _family_. Yet they were content to let strangers do the hard work. Do you not remember seeing the posters, the advertisements, the stories on television?’

She did. Oh god, she did.

 _They lied_ , the voice said, and she was scared that it sounded believable.

‘Do you not remember how you felt when you returned? Your dear brother was doing so _well_ on his own without you. He was living just fine without you. He probably still is.’ A bitter edge appeared in his voice. ‘And to think – every time you ruined your life, it was for his sake.’

_They lied._

The fog was growing thicker, surrounding and drowning out everything but those two words and his soft, warm voice. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears; the distant roar outside had grown to a thundering crescendo.

‘They felt guilty for leaving you. They never expected you to return. Why, they barely came to face your killer in court, they never joined the pleas for your killer to come to justice – they buried the name they cared for without questioning and moved on with their lives. You consigned yourself to a lifetime of hell to avoid disappointing them yet again – and for what?’

She forced a strangled choking sound from her throat, unable to reply. They’d apologised – she’d apologised – they loved her – she loved them – _they_ _lied_ … they couldn’t have lied… but _they lied_ …

Dimly she felt something warm take her hand, her hand that still clutched the green stone, and a comforting palm was laid on her forehead.

‘They abandoned you, dear girl,’ he said softly, voice sounding so very far away. ‘If they had truly wanted you to stay, you would still be there. They would have fought for you. Instead, it fell to you to fight for them. You fought so _well_ , child, for so long. Nobody can fault you for that.’

She was beginning to see it. But still… it had been _her_ who screwed up –

‘It was not you. You did what you thought was the best thing at the time – you made an honest mistake. _They_ were the ones who did not listen to you when you tried to explain. _They_ were the ones who listened to the doctors over you. You only wanted to keep them happy, did you not? You only wanted to make them proud. Being honest was your only mistake. Everyone makes mistakes, dear child. You did nothing wrong.’

They lied.

She had loved them, put her heart and body and life on the line for them, and _they_ _had_ _lied_.

A burning heat tore through her body, emanating from the stone in her hand and the hand on her head. It felt like fire in her veins, like electricity sparking through her every nerve – but it didn’t hurt. The hurt came from deeper. The hurt burned _so_ much deeper than the surface heat, so much deeper than the stone. It burned and it swelled and it rose and it flowed until it felt as if it would tear her apart from the inside out.

She hadn’t realised she was screaming until her lungs started burning in an entirely different manner and she took a huge ragged gasp of air, no longer bothering to hold back her tears.

‘It hurts, does it not?’ he said faintly, still sounding miles away. ‘Realising the truth of things. It is a cruelty unto itself that cuts deeper than anything. I cannot change your past; nobody can. But I can give you a future.’

The world around her was spinning again, going grey and fading at the edges as she choked through her sobs, desperately looking to find those strange green and gold eyes that promised a way out. She hardly dared believe what her ears had heard – she was fighting for consciousness as it was – surely he wasn’t saying…?

‘I can give you a future where you will make a difference – a future where you will belong. It will not be easy and it will not be painless; I cannot promise you will always be happy. But you _will_ have a purpose. You will be accepted as you are. You will be wanted. You will belong.’

Another surge of fiery heat ripped through her and she clutched at his hand like a lifeline. ‘Ple… please…’

His mismatched eyes glinted in the encroaching darkness. ‘Work for Doma. Accept the Orichalcos. Give me your loyalty, Reikana – and I will never abandon you.’

She accepted without a second’s hesitation; then all she knew was darkness once more.

* * *

‘Master Dartz said he would inform us of the outcome,’ Rafael said patiently. ‘You don’t have to wait out here.’

Valon folded his arms, not budging from where he sat on the ground, leaning against the hallway wall. ‘I’m not leaving ‘til I know she’s all right.’

‘And if Master Dartz decides she’s too dangerous and disposes of her?’

He shot Amelda a dirty look. ‘She won’t be, just you wait and see.’

‘Uh-huh. Given that she knocked Gurimho out, took me hostage and nearly set a dragon on us I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she ends up being drained of whatever souls are left and –’

‘ _Shut up_ , Amelda!’

Rafael shot an exasperated glare at Amelda, willing him to stop baiting Valon. Since the conclusion of the impromptu meeting and Dartz’s subsequent disappearance into the infirmary – after all other personnel were ejected, naturally – Valon had been wound more tightly than a tow-truck winch, skulking the hall outside the room where his “friend” was being kept in moody silence. Amelda, naturally, was having what appeared to be the time of his life.

Rafael was seriously considering the merits of picking up Amelda and bodily removing him from Valon’s presence when a soul-tearing scream echoed from the infirmary.

To his surprise it was Amelda who managed to grab Valon before the brunet made it to the door. In a second, though, he was there beside his oldest friend, each with and arm and a shoulder in their grasp as they hauled the struggling boy back.

‘Let me go!’ Valon shouted, eyes blazing. ‘She –’

‘Is with Master Dartz, and will be _fine_ ,’ Rafael ground out, tightening his grasp on the boy’s squirming body. ‘He said not to interrupt; don’t interrupt.’

‘But that –’

‘ _Valon_.’ He took a deep breath, willing himself not to raise his voice. ‘Whatever’s happening in there, it’s out of your hands. If you barge in I can _guarantee_ you Master Dartz will not allow her to stay.’ It was as close to a lie as he’d ever be able to tell – but then again, he’d seen the calculating look in his employer’s eyes before he entered the room (with firm instructions to not disturb him) and it really wouldn’t be that far-fetched for Master Dartz to do such a thing.

Thankfully Valon was too preoccupied with his so-called friend’s predicament to be worried about the truthfulness of Rafael’s statement. His struggles ceased and he slumped against the older pair. ‘It’s not _fair_ ,’ he whined.

‘It’s not fair that Master Dartz is actually taking the time to investigate the situation instead of just draining and –’

‘Amelda _–_ ’

The scream cut off to choking sobs and Valon pushed for the doorway once again. It wasn’t until Rafael looped an arm around the teen’s waist and hauled him clear of the floor that he even acknowledged the other two. ‘Let me go!’

‘Valon, stand _down_!’ Amelda barked. ‘If you go barging in the way you always do you’re liable to lose your own soul along with hers. Is that really what you want?’

‘But she’s –’

‘Still conscious and still possessing a soul, by the sounds of it. There’s nothing you can do. _Stand down_.’

‘But –’

‘Valon, goddammit, _listen_ to me,’ Amelda snarled. ‘Do you _want_ her to lose her soul? Do you want to lose yours as well? Because that’s what’s going to happen if you _don’t_ _stand_ _down_.’

He strained once more, but there was no real fire behind it, and he stopped bucking with a whine. ‘It’s not fair,’ he repeated, as if it would somehow change anything.

Rafael cautiously set the boy back on the ground, keeping an arm firmly around his waist in case he made another attempt at the door. He shot a thankful look to Amelda, who had also kept a firm grip on Valon’s arm, and received a thin-lipped nod in return.

‘Life is very rarely fair,’ Amelda said curtly. ‘You wouldn’t be with Doma if life had been _fair_ to you. None of us would be.’

Valon clenched his fists. ‘I _know_ that.’

‘Then you know there’s no use ranting and raving about it. Rafael already went above and beyond to let you bring her back here; Master Dartz is being generous enough to investigate before making any decisions. The best thing you can do now is to bite your tongue and follow your orders.’

With a snarl Valon tore himself free of Rafael’s grasp, spinning around to face the far wall of the hallway. He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. ‘I just… _shit_.’

‘Language,’ Amelda said tersely. Valon responded with a raised middle finger.

A short pulse of green light emanated from beneath the door and Rafael tensed, preparing to grab Valon once more, but the boy was still facing the far wall – he appeared to have missed it. The pulse certainly _seemed_ too short to have taken a soul but at the same time, it _was_ Master Dartz, and if anyone was capable of using the Orichalcos in unforeseen ways it was Master Dartz.

The sobbing faded off to silence.

Valon folded his arms and stared resolutely at the wall opposite the door.

Rafael and Amelda traded glances: one wary, one somewhat irritated.

Eventually, however, the infirmary door swung open to reveal their turquoise-haired employer, and Rafael and Amelda instantly sunk to one knee in a respectful bow. After a glare from Rafael, Valon also sunk to one knee and bowed his head. It lasted all of half a second before he looked back up. ‘Is she –’

‘Patience, Valon,’ Dartz sighed. He gestured to the other two men. ‘You may rise. If,’ he continued, with a pointed glare at Valon, ‘you can hold your tongues.’

Valon sprung to his feet, followed more sedately by the older two. He opened his mouth before remembering that he’d been ordered to be quiet and he closed it once more, his gaze darting between his colleagues and his employer.

‘What is your decision?’ Rafael asked, putting a hand on Valon’s shoulder.

Dartz’s lip curled into a small smirk. ‘She will be staying for now. But –’ he held his hand up to Valon, stemming the inevitable flood of thanks and-or questions – ‘her _continued_ presence will hinge on the fulfilment of several conditions. A probation, of sorts.’

Amelda, whose eyes had narrowed at his proclamation, folded his arms. ‘I assume some of those will deal with the magic?’

‘Naturally. She will be transferred to a less remote location for treatment and remain sedated until I have had the chance to create a set of restrictors.’

‘Restrictors?’

‘Yes, Rafael; restrictors. Until she has proven her worthiness – and loyalty – she will be forcibly prevented from using her magic by the innate sealing properties of the Orichalcos. You and Amelda – Gurimho as well – will be taught the appropriate release phrases.’

‘Why not –’

‘Because you identified her as your friend, Valon, and I am not willing to risk her talking you into releasing her before she has proven herself,’ Dartz said smoothly. ‘Now. As I said, she will remain sedated until I have the restrictors in place. If she proves capable of following orders, once healed of her injuries and adequately trained, she will become available to accompany the three of you on missions for Doma and to assist with Paradius work as suits. I believe she will prove quite a useful asset for us, in time.’

‘And if she isn’t capable?’ Amelda asked thinly.

Dartz’s smile hardened into a smirk. ‘Then the Great Beast gains a rather large number of new souls.’

Valon clenched his fists but said nothing.

‘Now, as to your performances during the mission. Ordinarily I would be quite upset that any of you were careless enough to be taken hostage, never mind by a child; however,’ he said, bowing his head slightly, ‘the circumstances in this situation were exceptional and, considering all factors in play, your mistakes were even perhaps understandable. Nonetheless, this cannot be repeated. Rafael, whilst your decision to bring her back for further investigation has proven extremely worthwhile, having one of your teammates taken hostage and a second knocked unconscious without notice is inexcusable. Gurimho will be leading the next series of missions until I feel comfortable giving control to you again.’

Rafael flushed slightly but bowed his head in acceptance. ‘Yes, Master Dartz.’

‘Amelda, while being surprised by a child is understandable, being careless enough to have your weapon stolen is _not_. You will undertake additional language study and martial arts training for the next fortnight to ensure such a thing does not happen again.’

‘Yes, Master Dartz,’ Amelda replied, nodding politely. His lips thinned slightly; otherwise there was no change in his demeanour.

Dartz looked to the last of his three Swordsmen with a frown. ‘And you, Valon. Yes; your actions resulted in a somewhat positive outcome. That does not make them _excusable_. You ignored or disobeyed multiple direct orders from your team leader and jeopardised the entire mission as a result, very nearly getting two of your colleagues killed. You are henceforth removed from active duty for the next two months.’

‘Two _months_?’ Valon whined, eyes widening. ‘What am I gonna do for –’

‘Team paperwork. Personal paperwork. Catching up on your education, Paradius training and development, assisting your friend with integration… perhaps cleaning the temple if you are truly short of things to do.’ Seeing the boy about to begin complaining yet again, he smoothly continued, ‘If you feel this is unfair, I would remind you that your so-called friend is not nearly as integral to Doma’s operations as you or your colleagues. Consider these two months a fair trade for the cost of her medical treatment and probation.’

Valon scowled. But, to Dartz’s delight, he didn’t argue further – in fact he actually nodded tersely, muttering agreement under his breath. Excellent. Dartz made a mental note to keep a close eye on the boy’s apparent loyalty to her; it could prove a very useful source of leverage in the future.

‘Very well, then; that will be all for now. I expect your reports to be finished in the standard twenty-four hours as per usual. Gurimho will arrange your return trip. And _no_ , Valon, you may not see her until she is cleared to begin training. If there are no further questions, you are dismissed.’

Rafael and Amelda gave short bows; Valon ducked his head with no real change in expression. But no questions came and – with only a single short glance at the door from Valon, followed by a heavy hand on his shoulder from Rafael – the three Swordsmen headed back down the hallway.

As he watched the three disperse, Dartz allowed himself a wide smile. It wasn’t often that something managed to genuinely surprise him (he didn’t count the side effects of Valon’s numerous less-than-ingenious activities; such occurrences were too short-term, he’d decided a long while ago, for him to be bothered). Valon’s little friend… well. _That_ had been a surprise. But, as always, he – through the Orichalcos – had capitalised on the situation, and no matter what happened in the future he would come out ahead.

If she proved unwilling to fall in line, he would simply have her eliminated and pass the relic on to one of the Swordsmen – Amelda, perhaps, given his talent for disguise already. If she fell in line, excellent; with proper training she would prove an ideal disposable shield for his three Swordsmen, and potentially a valuable asset for Paradius’ less-than-legitimate business dealings. If she turned on them when she discovered her brother’s role in the end of the world she would again be dealt with and the relic passed on, with the added bonus of hardening Valon even more than the burning of his church. And if none of that came to pass then when it came time to confront the Chosen his Swordsmen would be all but invincible. After all, the Nameless Pharaoh might be a ruthless adversary, but his host was very mortal – and even the most hardened of mortals would hesitate to act against their own beloved flesh and blood.

Dartz turned on his heel and made his way down the corridor, still smiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Corrupted by evil space-rocks or not, I still headcanon Dartz to be a schemer in his own right. Good thing said evil space-rocks block other kinds of magic (in addition to stealing souls and teleporting and creating illusions and sometimes summoning monsters and magically creating turquoise suits that one time...), huh?
> 
> Sigh, Season 4.


	7. Three Weeks Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rafael is not a morning person. Unfortunately, he's the only Swordsman both patient and responsible enough to deal with his master's newest acquisition.

Rafael was, to put it mildly, not a morning person. He’d spent years waking with the dawn on the island – it wasn’t as if he’d had a choice! – but once he’d returned to civilisation and discovered the wonders of caffeine and light-blocking curtains his waking habits had definitely taken a turn for the slower. These days he found it a titanic struggle to so much as speak before having his first coffee for the day. It wasn’t as if he was a late riser; he was typically up by eight at the latest. He just took a bit longer to get going was all. Thankfully Amelda _was_ a morning person (if five a.m. could be termed morning and not just a very late night) so Rafael could usually count on being greeted with pre-brewed coffee upon making his way into the temple kitchen of a morning.

Today, however, Amelda wasn’t in the kitchen at all – and if Amelda wasn’t there, the coffee most certainly wasn’t either, he realised gloomily.

Instead, perched in his friend’s usual spot (the stool on the far side of the room, in the corner formed by the bench and a wall) was a pale-skinned, ginger-haired, rather diminutive young boy. At least Rafael assumed he was young; he couldn’t have been more than four and a half feet tall, not with how high off the floor his legs were dangling, and his face looked remarkably cherubic. Between his hair and freckled complexion Rafael found himself forcibly reminded of _Annie_ … if the titular character had been a male and going through their “angsty preteen” phase, at least. Like Rafael he had his ears pierced; unlike Rafael, he had rings, studs and bars everywhere from lobes to rims on both sides, including some oddly chunky pieces – an ankh, a skull…

‘Uh… can I help you?’ Rafael asked awkwardly, wracking his half-asleep brain for a reason – _any_ reason – that there would be a strange child in the temple kitchen at this time of the morning. Correction; at _any_ time of the morning. Anywhere in the temple. On any day.

The boy sipped at what looked to be a mug of green tea, watching him in stony silence.

Rafael rubbed his head. He was feeling more self-conscious by the minute; the boy was tiny but his stare was unusually aggressive and – oh. Boy nothing; there could be no mistaking the etched metal collar around their neck. It took another few moments for him to dredge up the name and then he greeted her appropriately: ‘Kazumi. I take it you’ve been cleared to begin training?’

She inclined her head once, in an approximation of politeness. Her eyes (blue, currently) remained angry.

Rafael frowned. The thick silence was unnerving. From Amelda it would be expected; from a tomboyish girl (or was she actually male at the moment? Did changing her appearance change _that_ as well? Questions for after coffee) who barely came up to his waist it was somewhat disturbing. ‘Do you remember who I am?’

‘Rafael.’ Her voice was much, much deeper than the last time he had heard it – deeper even than his; evidently that face was older than he’d thought – but it still carried that venomous edge. She took another sip of the tea. ‘Master Dartz say I should thank you.’

‘You don’t sound particularly thankful,’ he said bluntly. His brain caught up with what his mouth had said a few seconds later and he winced; caffeine was most definitely in order.

She raised her free hand and flicked the ring around her neck. ‘Wonder why.’

‘I believe he was referring to the decision to save your life,’ Amelda said, stalking into the kitchen with an already-empty mug. ‘You know – because clearly we’re the ones who suggested your new accessory.’

‘If I know be like this –’

‘Yes, you’d rather be dead, I heard you the first time. Deal with it.’

‘Piss off,’ she muttered, returning to her tea.

Amelda tapped the fragment of Orichalcos stone on his pendant. ‘Manners, please.’

Her nostrils flared and she hissed into her drink. When Amelda’s gaze didn’t falter, she rolled her eyes. ‘Go ‘way, _kinoko-kami no shojo_.’

‘Much better.’ Catching Rafael’s utterly confused stare, he gave a careless shrug. ‘We already had a little talk. Turns out without my gun and her magic she’s still a – good morning, Master Dartz.’

‘Good morning, Amelda,’ the Atlantean replied, sweeping into the kitchen with his usual neutral expression, giving no sign that he’d heard anything of the prior conversation. ‘Good morning, Rafael, Kazumi.’

Rafael bowed his head respectfully. ‘Good morning, Master Dartz.’ To his surprise Kazumi followed suit, muttering a surprisingly sincere-sounding “good morning” to their employer. Behind Dartz’s back, Amelda raised an eyebrow at her – fortunately her head was still bowed and she missed it.

‘Hmm. I had hoped Valon would be awake by now; unfortunately he is quite the late sleeper when not on active duty. Rafael?’

‘Hn?’

‘Ah; you have yet to have your coffee. Once you have, it would be much appreciated if you could show Kazumi to her room here – the one opposite the laundry – and provide a brief tour of the temple before helping her to complete the outstanding paperwork. Valon will no doubt assist once he awakens but I would like to be sure she is informed of the necessities. She will require a new base identity to go along with the normal Paradius set-up, much the way Valon did; beyond that, the standard intake forms should suffice. Medical and criminal history has already been dealt with.’

He grunted his approval and, figuring he was already well overdue, made his way to the coffee machine. ‘Of course, Master Dartz.’

‘Excellent. Regrettably I will be unable to stay long as there are pressing matters at Paradius that demand my attention. Amelda, should you wish to join them, I believe it would prove helpful in acclimatising your newest colleague to her surroundings.’

Amelda inclined his chin slightly. If Rafael had been more alert he probably would have noticed the thinning of Amelda’s lips that meant “like hell”; as it was, preoccupied with thoughts of caffeine, he was quite content to assume Amelda was fine with the idea.

Dartz, who always noticed everything, gave Amelda a sly smirk before looking to Kazumi once more. ‘I do not expect you to fit in immediately, dear child, but I do expect you to at least make an effort to do so. Can you do that?’ When she nodded silent assent he continued, ‘Good. You will begin studies and such tomorrow; for today, completing your paperwork and familiarising yourself with things here should keep you sufficiently busy. Rafael should be able to answer any questions you may have.’

Her eyes hardened a little but she still bowed her head politely. ‘Thank-you, Master Dartz.’

‘Very good. Rafael, Amelda, a word in the hall?’

With a mental sigh Rafael left his unfinished coffee and followed his employer to the corridor outside the kitchen. Amelda stalked behind him, still clutching his own empty mug.

Dartz halted a short distance away from the kitchen. ‘It goes without saying, but she is still completely banned from using any magic until I say otherwise. She is permitted a single change of appearance if she does not wish for that face to be the one associated with her new identity; ensure that whatever she chooses does not have any active criminal charges against it. I have told her that the restrictions will be relaxed somewhat once the three of you are comfortable with it – _all_ three of you. Hopefully that will encourage her to behave.’

‘And if she doesn’t?’ Amelda asked.

‘I will be the one to make that call, my child,’ he said firmly, mismatched eyes glinting in silent warning. ‘As I said to her, I expect her to make a concerted effort to fit in. I also expect _you_ – as both senior employees and my Swordsmen – to not be overly antagonistic towards her, much as I expect her to do the same to you. I do not require you to be friendly, merely civil and polite, as with all your other co-workers.’

‘I’m sure things will be fine,’ Rafael said, ignoring the short glare sent at him by Amelda.

‘I have full faith in you, Rafael,’ Dartz responded, and with a final nod, turned on his heel and swept away down the corridor.

Amelda shook his head. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to have fun.’

‘You’re not –’

‘We’ve already established that tolerance is pushing both of our limits. I have no desire to play tour guide for another mouthy brat – Valon was bad enough and he at least had a pretty good grasp of English.’

Rafael sighed heavily, heading back to the kitchen and his waiting coffee. ‘I won’t force you. If you see Valon at all, send him my way.’

Kazumi didn’t appear to have moved at all, still swinging her legs and sipping her tea in silence. Her eyes narrowed as Amelda came in; he shot her a derisive smirk before passing Rafael his coffee and starting a fresh cup for himself. ‘I will. Though why you’d want to be followed around by the pair of _them_ I have no clue.’

‘Better than follow by lady-boy,’ she muttered into her tea.

As Amelda turned to snap at her, Rafael tuned out the pair of them out in favour of gulping down his first coffee for the day.

Valon had better wake up _soon_.

* * *

On the whole, Rafael reflected gloomily, it was probably for the best that Amelda hadn’t come with them. Kazumi was at least willing to listen to him without argument – possibly because he’d been the one to order her return, probably because he cut a much more threatening figure than Amelda did – but even then she was not exactly a pleasant person to deal with. She wasn’t as belligerent as Valon had been and she obediently followed his directions… but she practically _radiated_ an aura of malevolent sulkiness. Coupled with her unwillingness to speak unless directly asked a question and refusal to give more than one- or two-word replies unless necessary, it was the most awkward and uncomfortable Rafael had ever felt walking around the temple.

At least her silence meant he didn’t have to spend hours answering questions the way he had for Valon. Small mercies, he supposed. The net result was that the tour of the temple had taken only a little more than half an hour, even including the ten-minute round trip to the sea-level vehicle facilities, and Rafael found himself making his second coffee of the day barely an hour after finishing his first.

He certainly wasn’t about to subject himself to filling out paperwork on only _one_ coffee.

Kazumi sat patiently at the kitchen bench as he brewed up. Silently, too, but that was somewhat expected by this point. She occasionally fiddled with her collar – it was evidently as heavy and unyielding as it looked; he suspected that there’d be chafe marks on her shoulders beneath her shirt – but made practically no noise at all until Rafael took a seat beside her and explained that she had the chance to change her face.

‘Why?’ she asked, tilting her head somewhat suspiciously.

‘To pick a more – ah – appropriate appearance to go with your new identity.’ He hurriedly tapped at the tablet in his hands, loading up a fresh set of Paradius employee intake forms. ‘Unless you’d prefer to stay as you are for the next few years.’

‘Not able change again?’

Well, that was a loaded question. ‘Not regularly, no. Think of it as a new… what was the name? Aleksey?’ When she scowled and nodded, he continued, ‘A new Aleksey. You’ll use it for everyday activities and Paradius duties; you won’t use another face or name unless a mission demands it.’ If she ever got to go on missions to begin with, that was. Thankfully that decision was out of _his_ hands.

‘Not say use Kazumi?’

‘You can’t use a face or name with any current criminal charges against it.’

She scowled. ‘Who say –’

‘Master Dartz.’ Figuring that she’d probably have further questions along the same line, he added, ‘He told us about the Sheut, about your charges as Kazumi and about the... the _work_ you did as Aleksey.’ If there was a better way to describe “fifty-plus murders for hire and-or boredom”, he didn’t want to think about it. At least most of the victims had been other criminals…

It wasn’t often that Rafael was struck by how _odd_ his life was but in that moment – helping an underage, shape-shifting mass murderer fill in employee intake forms for Paradius and Doma over something as mundane as a morning coffee – he couldn’t help but briefly wonder just how on Earth he’d ended up here. Then he caught himself wondering if being an underage, shape-shifting mass murderer was all that much stranger than surviving three years on a deserted island as a preteen and he promptly decided against following that train of thought. It wouldn’t lead anywhere pleasant and there was still a decent amount of paperwork left to complete.

Her scowl deepened briefly. After a few tense seconds she shrugged and folded her arms. ‘Fine. I know which one.’

He blinked. ‘You’re sure? You won’t be able to change it later.’

‘I sure.’

‘ _I’m_ sure.’

She sighed, then repeated: ‘I’m sure.’

Mentally shrugging, Rafael ran over the release phrase in his mind before saying, ‘Okay. Once I release it, I’ll give you ten seconds to shift before I lock it again. Is that enough time?’ When she nodded he began speaking under his breath, being careful to strike a balance between enunciating each word clearly and not speaking loudly enough for her to hear everything.

A soft hum sounded from the collar as the chant finished. That awful whisper-hiss noise filled his ears as her skin shifted – even knowing it was coming didn’t make his stomach churn any less; it was like watching someone turn themselves inside-out without the blood. To his surprise her skin tone darkened to a rich olive and her hair shifted to a dark brown, almost black colour, before lengthening until it almost reached the middle of her back. Her eyes liquefied for a moment before reforming with dark brown irises; her nose and chin sharpened, her cheekbones rose, and her proportions shifted until a twenty-something (and four-and-half-foot tall) young woman now stood in front of him instead of the oddly youthful ginger man.

She looked at the back of her right hand for a moment, studying the tattooed lines and dots now present there, before nodding to Rafael. ‘Done.’ The new voice was vaguely familiar, somehow; it took Rafael a moment to realise that this was the same face she’d used back in Nakhodka, after Aleksey’s soul had been taken from her.

The restrictor lock was restored with another faint hum. He directed her into position for a (scowling) headshot, then brought up the rest of the form. ‘What name would you like to use? Like the face, it’ll be the one you keep –’

‘Khalidah.’

This time he didn’t bother to ask if she was sure. ‘How do I spell that?’

She paused, thought for a moment, and then shook her head. ‘I write. Easier.’

‘I _will_ write,’ he said reflexively, and passed her the tablet. She rolled her eyes and took it without repeating his correction.

‘You’ll need a last name, too,’ he added, as she drew the last _h_.

This time she did pause to think. It wasn’t for long, though, and before Rafael could offer any advice she was drawing a second name on the form – _Mekhit_.

‘What does that mean?’

A small, proud smile appeared on her face. ‘Khalidah is face name. Mekhit is – um… sky-thing… like Great Leviathan?’

‘A god?’

She nodded eagerly. ‘Girl lion god of war.’

Rafael couldn’t help but smile a little himself. He was grateful that at least Mekhit sounded like a plausible surname; getting Valon to agree on Arashi (and not, say, “Thunderfist”, “Bloodrain” or “Firestorm”) had been a process he wasn’t keen on repeating. ‘Khalidah Mekhit. Very good.’ He paused, wondering how far to pry, before asking: ‘Is there a reason you chose Khalidah as your face?’

Her smile disappeared. Kazumi – _Khalidah_ , he corrected himself – frowned slightly before shrugging. ‘Always kind to me. Helps. Not treat like… like kid.’ A brief pause, and then she nodded before quietly adding, ‘Not look weak.’

‘All good reasons.’ He mentally ran through the rest of the form. ‘You’ll also want to put your birthday in, if you know it; if you don’t, just enter your age – optionally a month as well – and Paradius will select one for you. I’ll fill in everything else.’

This time she did hesitate. Eventually, though, she selected the previous month and scribbled “14” before passing the tablet back to him, stony-faced once more. ‘Not remember day. Not matter.’

Christ, _another_ fourteen-year-old? Was there some sort of tradition that demanded Doma only hire underage kids? Amelda had been hired at thirteen (but not introduced to Rafael until fourteen); Valon had only recently turned fifteen after more than half a year’s service… if he didn’t know better (or been hired at sixteen himself) Rafael would have had some serious concerns about Master Dartz’s hiring preferences. He couldn’t decide if the fact she looked like she was in her early twenties made the situation better or worse.

He finished filling out the rest of the form quickly –to be employed as a temporary personal assistant; direct manager Gurimho Cabello; yes to creating new emails, bank accounts and employee records; opt in to the Paradius “fast track” executive program (in other words, generate alternate identities, fake background records and add her to the appropriate Doma training sessions); opt _out_ of the 401k account generation. ‘I take it Master Dartz has explained the terms of your employment here?’

She shrugged. ‘Say do what told by him, you, _kinoko-kami no shojo_ and no-hair-man. Do what told by Valon only if someone else say too. Say study and do Paradius work, maybe get to do go-away work. Do good enough maybe collar go away.’

‘That’s pretty accurate.’ He skimmed the remainder of the form. ‘Ah – one last question. What languages can you comfortably speak and write?’

Khalidah hesitated again. ‘Speak like hear?’

‘As in you can hold a conversation in that language.’ He looked up, frowning slightly. ‘As I recall, though, you can understand English a lot better than you speak it.’

She tilted her hand side-to-side. ‘Understand lots – almost all, if listen and good voice know. Speak… Japanese very good, Roshiago small good, English small good. Write romaji good, kana and kanji small good.’

Under “fluent” he put Japanese, then English and Russian under “average-remedial”. ‘What do you mean by you understand if you listen and a good voice knows?’

She pointed at the ankh in her ear. ‘They hear, tell me what said.’

‘What _is_ said.’

She shot him a glare before sighing heavily and repeating, ‘They hear, tell me what _is_ said. So not-good voice, not-good understand.’

‘They can’t tell you what to say?’

She furrowed her brow. ‘When they talk to me, not… uh, is not…’ she gesticulated briefly at her mouth. ‘Is not like what I say.’

‘They talk to you in a different language?’ Rafael guessed.

She half-shook her head. ‘Not – uh –’

‘Language.’

‘Lan-gwidge,’ she repeated, then nodded. ‘They not talk to me in same lan-gwidge. Is… is just there. Just know.’

He rubbed the back of his neck, brow furrowed. ‘So they don’t talk to you in English, or Japanese, or any other language – you just understand them?’ When she nodded again he made a mental note to mention that particular fact to Master Dartz before continuing, ‘How do you know which of them are talking to you?’

‘Like you know _kinoko-kami no shojo_ talk to you, not Master Dartz.’

‘So they still sound different even though they’re not talking?’

She thought about this for a moment before nodding.

‘How many of them are there?’

At that her eyes – flickered, almost, as if she’d briefly fallen unconscious while standing upright – before narrowing. ‘Many. Too many. Why you want know?’

Rafael held up his hand placatingly. ‘I’m just curious, that’s all. I’ve never seen anything like your ankh – never even heard of anything like it. It’s interesting, and I like learning about new things.’

Her eyes remained cautious. Christ above, was she on edge – Valon had been a coiled spring, but she was a whole other level. Then again Valon’s arrival had at least been planned. She’d been ambushed, shot and effectively… well, kidnapped wasn’t the right word, but he wasn’t sure what the correct word was.

Rafael frowned, trying to recall what he’d said to Valon that had (kind of) settled the boy down when he’d first arrived. She was so like how Valon had used to be it was eerie: watching everything out of the corner of her eyes, arms permanently folded, face permanently scowling. Perhaps she would react in the same way he had done? It certainly couldn’t hurt to try.

He cleared his throat. ‘Kazu – sorry, Khalidah, I’ll say to you the same thing I’ve told everyone else who lives here: if you have any problems – whether it’s with settling in, with lessons, with another employee or even if it’s nothing whatsoever to do with Doma or Paradius – my door is always unlocked and I’m happy to help as best I can.’

Instead of relaxing her his words seemed to have the opposite effect: her shoulders tensed, her frown deepened and she gave a dismissive snort. ‘Right. Bet _that_ free.’

‘Why wouldn’t it be?’ he asked, confused.

‘Nobody give up nothing for free.’

‘I hardly think offering help is giving up anything.’

‘Yeah. Right. “Help”,’ she scoffed, hooking her fingers to form loose air quotes.

Well. Good to see she at least had a healthy sense of sarcasm in common with Amelda. Rafael inhaled, briefly wondering whether that boded well or ill for the future, before exhaling harshly and shaking his head. ‘Look: I’ve said my piece. It’s up to you whether or not to take advantage of it. If there’s nothing else I can assist you with, we’re done here – there’s nothing else on your schedule before dinner tonight. You’ve got free access to the entire temple except the Hall of Souls and private rooms. Valon will probably be up soon and will be able to help you settle in.’

Any hope that mentioning her so-called “friend” would calm her down died the moment he said Valon’s name. Even before he’d finished talking her frown had turned into a full-blown scowl; her hands closed into fists before she jammed them into her pockets. ‘ _On mozhet hui_ ,’ she muttered. Her tone suggested nothing pleasant.

‘English in the temple, if you would.’

She shook her head and pushed her stool back. ‘Not know words.’ Then, as if she’d been reminded to, she glanced up at him and said, ‘Thank-you for help.’

Somehow, it came off as even more sarcastic than the air quotes.

Rafael watched her stalk off into the temple with more than a little trepidation, suddenly glad that Valon hadn’t woken in time to join them. Hopefully she was just annoyed that the youngest Swordsman was still sleeping.

Well – his job was done. No point worrying about things now.

Maybe a half-hour later, and only halfway through his reheated second coffee, said youngest Swordsman padded into the kitchen with a yawn. ‘Morning, Raf.’

‘Morning, Valon. Your friend – has arrived.’ He silently congratulated himself on not calling her by her old name. True, it wasn’t as if he’d had much occasion to use it, but on one and a half coffees he’d take what he could get. ‘She’s probably in her room now – it’s across the hall from the laundry. She’s had the tour and done her intake paperwork but she’d probably benefit from talking with someone she’s familiar with.’

To his surprise Valon hesitated. Physically, visually hesitated, and it was strange enough that for a moment Rafael completely forgot his own annoyance. Was this really the same Valon who had almost gotten himself shot in her defence three weeks ago?

‘That so?’ the teen finally asked, rubbing the back of his head awkwardly. ‘I… I guess I probably should go say hi, huh?’

Rafael hesitated himself before replying, ‘Yeah.’ After a moment’s thought, he added, ‘A heads-up: she’s got a new face now, and a new name too – Khalidah. She’ll probably be joining you for study tomorrow but for today she’s just getting settled in.’

‘Khalidah. Huh.’ Valon did not look terribly enthusiastic about either the name or the prospect of studying with her. Well; _this_ boded fantastically. ‘Guess she can’t use her old name either.’

‘Mm. Too many charges still active.’

Valon didn’t respond to that, either.

Rafael watched in silence as Valon slowly made himself breakfast (cereal and milk with a heavily sweetened coffee), the both of them frowning mildly for the duration. This was very odd. First her aggressiveness, then his reluctance – and without either having spoke to the other since Nakhodka.

Teenagers. _Sigh_.

Well – it was out of his hands now. Either she’d adjust or she wouldn’t. It wasn’t as if she was _his_ friend and it wasn’t as if she was particularly likeable in the first place; he was hardly about to wish death upon a teenager but he wasn’t about to be especially upset if it happened. Particularly if was the result of disobeying Master Dartz, or worse, endangering Amelda or Valon.

Still, Rafael found himself mildly hoping that Valon could at least talk some sense of camaraderie into the girl. Contentment was a rare occurrence for _anyone_ affiliated with Doma. Regardless of whether she stayed around for a few weeks or permanently, he couldn’t quite bring himself to wish for her to suffer for the duration. And if her presence brought something approaching satisfaction with his lot to the youngest of the Swordsmen, well… so much the better.

He wasn’t about to hold his breath, though.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, if you're going to start a whole international company to support your apocalypse cult, you might as well get your money's worth out of your cult members. I'm also really fond of the idea of the Swordsmen in suits now and then so hell with it. As to Gurimho's surname, my pet theory is that Gurimho is a corruption of "Guillermo", so I picked a Spanish surname for him... one that apparently means "hair". It's probably a good thing that I'll never need to name another human being.
> 
> "On mozhet hui" is a very rough and crude translation of "he can go fuck himself". And she's 100% lying when she says she doesn't know the English words for it. On a related note: "kinoko-kami no shojo" absolutely does not mean "red-haired man"; it's "mushroom-haired girl". And while Amelda may not know right now, you can bet that he does find out in the future and responds appropriately.


End file.
